Oral Answers to Questions

WALES

The Secretary of State was asked—

Convergence Funding

Wayne David: What recent discussions he has had with the Welsh Assembly Government on how convergence funding will be spent in West Wales and the Valleys.

Betty Williams: What discussions he has had with Cabinet and Welsh Assembly Government colleagues about convergence funding in West Wales and the Valleys.

Nick Ainger: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have regular discussions with Cabinet and Welsh Assembly Government colleagues on a range of issues, including convergence funding for West Wales and the Valleys.

Wayne David: I thank the Minister for that reply, and I am sure that he will agree that the objective 1 programme has been a great success in West Wales and the Valleys. Looking to the future, however, does he agree that we need to build on that success and to ensure that convergence funding is focused on the areas of greatest need, and that there is a complementarity of existing Government programmes and a strategic focus on how the money is spent?

Nick Ainger: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend about the success of the objective 1 programme. The statistics covering the objective 1 area of West Wales and the Valleys show that unemployment there has fallen by more than 22 per cent. compared with a 12 per cent. fall in the UK. They also show that average earnings since 2001 have risen by 21 per cent. in west Wales and the valleys compared with a UK average rise of 17 per cent. A range of other statistics also shows just how successful the past objective 1 programme has been. We are now moving into the convergence funding programme, and the Assembly has rightly decided—along the lines of my hon. Friend's suggestion—that it will focus on fewer but more strategic projects, targeting resources where they will have the greatest impact—namely, on skills, research and development, and innovation, to build on the success of the objective 1 programme. It is worth reminding Members what the Opposition said about objective 1—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Betty Williams: Does my hon. Friend agree that the wise investment of the objective 1 funding in Wales has secured the future protection of both traditional and modern, 21st-century industries? Examples include a £1 million investment in Conwy port in my constituency, which has secured the future and development of the fishing industry there, and the £8 million investment in Technium CAST at Parc Menai in Bangor, which has ensured the continuation of the successful partnership between businesses and the university of Wales, Bangor. That has secured safe jobs in my constituency.

Nick Ainger: I congratulate the organisations that have been involved in trying to support the traditional industries as well as the cutting-edge industries such as those being developed at Technium CAST, which I visited last year. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State also visited it recently and met representatives of Brandsauce and the Inspired Gaming Group, which are creating more than 200 new jobs there. That is a good example of how objective 1 funding has been able not only to protect existing jobs but to go into the innovative industries such as those at Technium CAST. We were regularly told that objective 1 would not work or that we would not get it, but we did get it and it has been a success, and Members on both sides of the House should congratulate the Welsh Assembly Government on the way in which they have delivered objective 1 programmes in Wales.

Hywel Williams: What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Treasury regarding the cutting of Revenue jobs in the objective 1 areas at the same time as jobs are being created? The Government are destroying well-paid jobs in Porthmadog and in other constituencies neighbouring mine. Has the Secretary of State done anything about this, or has he just let the Treasury get on with it?

Nick Ainger: The hon. Gentleman will know that the proposals by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are out for consultation. I have already written on behalf of the Wales Office to express concern about the number of jobs involved and where they will be located, particularly as a significant proportion of them are to be located in the convergence funding area. Obviously, there will be ongoing discussions on that matter. A proper, detailed consultation process is being undertaken on this, in which the Public and Commercial Services Union is actively involved. Indeed, I have already exchanged correspondence with the union. We must recognise that Wales has benefited from the relocation of public sector jobs into Wales, including more than 1,500 in the past few years from London and elsewhere into my constituency and the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), as well as Cwmbran and Cardiff. So there has been a flow in, but the hon. Gentleman has raised an issue that stems from the merger of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue, which will result in a far more efficient bureaucracy than we had before. We must take that into account, but the problem lies in where the jobs are being taken from.

David Jones: The Minister has mentioned the successes of the objective 1 project, but I am sure that he will be aware of figures obtained from the Welsh Assembly Government only last week indicating that, with just one month of objective 1 to go, only 58,500 of the 96,400 jobs promised for West Wales and the Valleys—61 per cent.—have been created to date. Does he agree that part of the problem is the Welsh Assembly Government's over-centralised approach and tendency to micro-manage projects? Will he urge his colleagues in Cardiff bay to allow more decisions on the application of convergence funding in future to be made at local level, with the full participation of local authorities?

Nick Ainger: In relation to the success of the project and reaching the job creation target, I would challenge the hon. Gentleman's comments. He said that the objective 1 programme had only a month or two to go. In fact, the objective 1 programme will not finish until 2008, as there is a two-year time lag. The jobs target is ambitious, but let us be honest—we needed an ambitious target, bearing in mind the economy that the Tory Government left to Wales in 1997. While there will be those who pick particular areas and say that they have not been a success, he must recognise that the objective 1 programme has been a resounding success overall. Unemployment is down dramatically, employment is up significantly and earnings are also up significantly. We see massive progress throughout Wales—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Cross-border Transport

Ian Lucas: What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Transport on cross-border transport links in north-east Wales.

Peter Hain: I regularly meet Cabinet colleagues to discuss issues affecting Wales, including transport links.

Ian Lucas: Strong economic growth in north-east Wales is leading increasingly to congestion problems. Rail improvements, such as the Wrexham-London line, the Wrexham-Liverpool electrification project and improvements to the Chester-Wrexham line provide a sustainable alternative to road traffic in north-east Wales. Will my right hon. Friend have discussions with the Secretary of State for Transport to explore the availability of funding from the transport innovation fund to ensure a dynamic, non-congested local economy in north-east Wales?

Peter Hain: I will be happy to make representations to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport as my hon. Friend suggests, and I will keep him in touch on that. I pay tribute to him for his tireless work in lobbying for improved rail services in Wrexham, and particularly for the way in which he has been able to secure, with the Welsh Assembly Government, funding for a new depot at Wrexham, which will create more than 55 new permanent jobs and pave the way for a regular service between Wrexham and London Marylebone. His point about shifting traffic off the roads and on to rail in that fashion is absolutely right.

Owen Paterson: Two days ago, I took the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—and I echo the Secretary of State's congratulations on landing the money—to see the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), to discuss the Wrexham-Shropshire-Marylebone railway project, which is an open access agreement. That project was planned to start next June and is now drifting because of bureaucratic delays. Will the Secretary of State undertake to work closely with the Department for Transport in Marsham street to ensure that the project stays on track, as it will be of huge benefit to those on both sides of the border?

Peter Hain: We have already had meetings on that point, and we will pursue it. I remind the hon. Gentleman that I do not think that anyone ever took my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) anywhere, certainly not him. I also remind him that the Government are spending £110 million every week in the United Kingdom to improve our railways, which is a massive advance on the terrible record of the Tory Government he supported.

Albert Owen: My right hon. Friend is right that rail depots are important for the maintenance of cross-border trains between England and Wales. He will be aware of the Virgin Trains proposal for a rail maintenance depot in my constituency to meet the 2008 timetable, although there is a bit of slippage on that. Will he use his good offices to bring together the Welsh Assembly Government, the Department for Transport and Virgin Trains to ensure that that happens on time, providing proper maintenance and increased jobs in north-west Wales?

Peter Hain: Yes, indeed. I shall be happy to do that. My hon. Friend has worked hard to ensure that these matters are addressed, and Holyhead's ferry port is booming and prosperity and job opportunities are improving as a result. Nevertheless, there is a great deal more to be done, and my hon. Friend is right to press me on that.

Lembit �pik: I welcome the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) back to the Chamber following her recent illness. It is good to see her again. We also send our best wishes to the Secretary of State's wife following her recent unfortunate car accident.
	The Minister will know of the appalling delays and cancellations on the Arriva Trains service on the Mid Wales line. My constituent Eleanor Cruz is consistently late for work in Shrewsbury as a direct result of them, and her problems typify those of many users. Given that not everyone can fly with my air service, will the Secretary of State support the re-establishment of a dual rail track from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth to improve the frequency and reliability of the service, and ensure that these horrendous delays become a thing of the past?

Peter Hain: The hon. Gentleman's air service is mentioned in the House so often that the issue of Flights for Questions may arise. I understand that the Assembly Government, Network Rail and Arriva Trains Wales are undertaking a feasibility study to consider setting up an hourly train service between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury.
	I join the hon. Gentleman in welcoming the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) back to her seatto have a go at me later, I hope. The hon. Lady is an extremely dutiful Member: she even went through the Lobby in her wheelchair to vote for a Plaid Cymru motion on Iraq, while the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) was enjoying tapas and vino tinto in Madrid.

Orders in Council

David Evennett: In what circumstances he expects to use Orders in Council under the provisions of the Government of Wales Act 2006.

Peter Hain: Orders in Council will be used to grant enhanced powers to the National Assembly at the request of the Welsh Assembly Government.

David Evennett: Given that Orders in Council will be used to transfer primary legislation powers to the Assembly, can the Secretary of State confirm that any proposals he presents will be the subject of proper parliamentary debate and scrutiny rather than just a one-and-a-half-hour debate here or in the other place?

Peter Hain: As the hon. Gentleman knowsalthough he, or at least his party, voted against the Government of Wales Act, which was a pretty shameful and typically anti-Welsh stance for the Tories to takethere is new provision for Orders in Council to streamline the process of the Assembly's gaining extra powers. As I told the Assembly yesterday, however, there is no question of Parliament simply rubber-stamping requests from the Assembly. Parliament has never been in the business of rubber-stamping anything. There will, I trust, be proper scrutiny through the Welsh Affairs Committee, and probably something similar in the House of Lords.

Chris Bryant: Could an Order in Council be used to remove a royal warrant from a company that is closing its factory in Rhondda? The Queen and the Prince of Wales currently provide a warrant for Burberry, but it is trying to withdraw its production from the United Kingdom by closing the Rhondda factory. Will the Secretary of State write to Her Majesty to try to persuade her to remove the royal warrant?

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not an appropriate way in which to use a question.

Elfyn Llwyd: May I add my welcome to the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), and send my sincere best wishes to the Secretary of State's wife for a speedy and full recovery?
	As the Secretary of State will know, yesterday the National Assembly unanimously passed a motion calling on the First Minister to seek the support of the United Kingdom Government for the establishment of an agreed protocol on how the Secretary of State will consider each application from the Assembly Government for an Order in Council under the Government of Wales Act. Will the Secretary of State commit himself to an urgent discussion on that protocol, and in due course sign up to it on the basis that it is crucial to the working of the Act?

Peter Hain: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his best wishes to my wife, which I will certainly pass on to her.
	In the light of the Government of Wales Act it is important for us to modify the protocols, particularly devolution guidance notes. They must be a matter between the Welsh Assembly and United Kingdom Governments, not between the Assembly and the House of Commons or Parliament as a whole, but there is no doubt that action is needed. I told the Assembly yesterday that we should establish a presumption in favour of granting it extra powers unless the principle or scope of the request is clearly wrongfor instance, if it covers a non-devolved matter.

Cheryl Gillan: I associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) about Elizabeth; Conservative Members too wish her well. I also thank the boys for welcoming me back. I obviously need to be back at the Dispatch Box to rebut the rubbish that the Secretary of State talks about Tory policies both in this House and in the Welsh Assembly. Can the Secretary of State clarify whether under the new Act an Order in Councila request for legislation made by the Welsh Assembly Governmentcan be amended or refused by any of the following: the Welsh Grand Committee, the House of Lords, this House or himself?

Peter Hain: I relish having the hon. Lady back at the Dispatch Box, and I am glad that she has returned to it with her normal feisty approach to matters. As she knows, because she was present for some days in Committee on the Floor of the House, the Order in Council procedure will be subject to proper scrutiny. I believe that the Welsh Affairs Committee is the right vehicle for that, and any amendments and so forth can be considered in that context. As the hon. Lady brought up rubbishing Tory policies, let me remind Members that the Tories' hypocrisy on devolution is absolutely staggering: they did all that they could during the passage of the Government of Wales Bill to stop the Assembly getting new powers.

Cheryl Gillan: The Secretary of State knows that we voted against that Bill on Third Reading with a proviso. Is it not really the truth that the request for an Order need never reach this Parliament because he has taken to himself the powers of a Viceroy of Wales and he himself can block or alter the legislation, so it need never reach this House and this House can be taken out of the equation? Is that what his new constitutional convention is about, and is not this threat to refuse their requests the ideal weapon to bring Rhodri Morgan and Welsh Labour to heel?

Peter Hain: I do not know whether the hon. Lady was preparing that rather silly intervention while she was away. The truth is that the Secretary of State would be in discussion with the First Minister about what the Assembly proposed to put to the Houseif the hon. Lady were ever to occupy the post of Secretary of State she would be in exactly the same position. That route via the Secretary of State is the route by which any such proposal comes before this Parliament. So of course there will be discussions. This is not a question of acting as a Viceroy or exercising vetoes; it is about undertaking the proper procedures. As for the hon. Lady's argument that her party opposed the Bill with a proviso, let me point out that they voted against it on both Second and Third Reading, which shows their anti-devolution stance; they are the same old Tories.

RAF St. Athan

Philip Dunne: What recent discussions he has had with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence on the future of RAF St. Athan.

Nick Ainger: My right hon. Friend and I have regular discussions with Defence Ministers on a range of issues, including the current and future use of RAF St. Athan.

Philip Dunne: What assurances has the Secretary of State received from his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence that enabled him to say with such confidence on BBC Radio Wales on 27 October that thousands of jobs will be brought in? Has he done some shoddy backroom deal to shore up vulnerable Labour seats for the Welsh Assembly elections?

Nick Ainger: Everyone knows that whichever bid for the defence training academy is successful, it will bring in thousands of jobs. That is what my right hon. Friend was saying. Whoever wins the bid will have a superb opportunity to give a massive boost to their local economy. But it is important that the proper due process be undertaken openly and transparently, so the Ministry of Defence has properly subjected the bids to a rigorous and impartial evaluation process, overseen by an independent auditor. I am confident that when the final decision is made, it will be based on merit and value for the taxpayerand may the best bid win.

Roger Williams: If the consortium led by Qinetiq is successful in bringing those jobs to St. Athan, will the Minister hold consultations with his colleagues in the Welsh Assembly to ensure that there is transport to enable people who live in the more deprived valleys to take advantage of the opportunities that will become available to them?

Nick Ainger: Yes, the Assembly is looking at that, and if the St. Athan bid is successful, infrastructure issues will clearly have to be addressed, which will have a direct benefit for those valley communities.

Farepak

Madeleine Moon: What discussions he has had with Assembly and Cabinet colleagues on the impact of the collapse of Farepak in Wales.

Peter Hain: I have had a number of such discussions, because the Farepak collapse has been devastating for thousands of Welsh families.

Madeleine Moon: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Eighty families in my constituency have benefited from loans of up to 400 and 500, thanks to Valleys to Coast Housing's giving a 15,000 interest-free loan to the credit union. Some 139 new members have now joined the credit union, and Peter Morgan estate agents is also raising money and collecting gifts. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is quite a contrast with the parsimony of HBOS and the Farepak directors, who took savers' money to save their champagne lifestyles?

Peter Hain: I agree with the point that my hon. Friend makes. What has happened to Farepak customers is absolutely scandalous, and HBOS should ensure that it donates to the Farepak response fund. It has only six hours left to do so, so let it get on with it.

Anne Snelgrove: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the statement issued by unfarepak.co.uka network of young mums, 90 per cent. of whom are on low incomes, who are calling for a boycott of HBOS? Does he agree that HBOS does indeed have six hours to pay into the response fund more than the 2 million in interest that it made from Farepak, or accept the consequences?

Peter Hain: All Members of this House will echo the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend, and I pay tribute to her and to my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) for the tireless way in which they targeted HBOS, ensured that the Farepak scandal was brought to the public's attention, and ensured that attempts were made to resolve the situation and to fill the funding gap that was so scandalously left.

Dee Estuary

Ben Chapman: What organisations are involved in the administration of the Dee estuary.

Nick Ainger: There are two: on the English side, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' Marine Fisheries Agency; and on the Welsh side, the Environment Agency.

Ben Chapman: The Dee estuarya specially protected area, a site of special scientific interest several times over, and a Ramsar siteis one of the most highly protected areas in Europe. Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that the balance between industry and the environment needs to be co-ordinated by a strategic body, rather than by the 80-odd agenciesadministrative bodies, local authorities, planning agencies and various other types of agencythat are said to be involved at the moment?

Nick Ainger: I understand my hon. Friend's point, but I can reassure him that although up to 80 other organisations have an interest in the Dee estuary's management, from an administrative point of view only the Marine Fisheries Agency and the Environment Agency are involved. I can offer my hon. Friend some hope. Through the White Paper that we will publish shortly, and the marine Bill that we intend to introduce in the next parliamentary Session, we hope to see the consolidation of marine management in places such as the Dee estuary.

Police

Stephen Crabb: What discussions he has had with the Home Secretary on the implementation of neighbourhood policing in Wales.

Peter Hain: I have had a number of such discussions, because effective neighbourhood policing is absolutely vital.

Stephen Crabb: The Secretary of State will share the sense of shock felt by many in Pembrokeshire at the fatal stabbing last week of Lance Corporal Kinnon Ragni outside a Haverfordwest nightclub. He may also be aware that the Dyfed-Powys police authority has been unable to take up the offer of accelerated funding from the Home Office for new community support officers from 2008 because of serious concerns about a funding shortfall. Will the Secretary of State sit down with the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety and ensure that this issue is resolved, because more than ever, my constituents need some reassurance and action on crime and community safety?

Peter Hain: I join the hon. Gentleman in condemning that evil attack. For reasons that are a matter for the chief constable of Dyfed-Powyshe has other policing prioritieshe has decided not to draw down the extra funding for community support officers. The hon. Gentleman will know, however, that crime doubled under the Conservatives and police numbers fell every year from 1993. Under Labour in Wales, we have had more CSOs than ever before270, rising to 700 next yearand 1,000 extra police officers, 157 of whom are in the hon. Gentleman's Dyfed-Powys authority. That is a very good record on policing from Labour in Wales.

Jennifer Willott: As the Secretary of State will know, Cardiff is one of the areas piloting the 101 non-emergency number alongside 999. Following recent news that the roll-out of the programme is being delayed, supposedly because of cost, does he agree that if the Welsh police forces had not been forced to waste 900,000 on the abandoned police force merger, the money could have been used instead to roll out 101 in support of community policing across Wales?

Peter Hain: The 101 facility is important and the hon. Lady is right to raise it, but I remind her that there has been a massive increase in funding for Welsh police forces under this Government, including 1,000 extra police officers and 270 extra community support officers, rising to 700 next year, to the benefit of her constituency and every other constituency in Wales. It is under Labour that policing has been supported in Wales and she should welcome that.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked

Injured Soldiers

Mark Harper: On which dates since 21June 2006 he has visited British soldiers injured in Iraq or Afghanistan; and which locations were visited.

John Prescott: As the House will be aware, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Riga at the NATO summit. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, who is accompanying the Prime Minister, will make a statement to the House tomorrow.
	My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it clear on several occasions that any contact with injured soldiers is a private matter and should remain so. In addition, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in sending our condolences to the family and friends of Sergeant Hollingsworth, who was killed in Iraq last Friday. The whole House will be very proud of and grateful for the difficult and dangerous job he and others were doing on behalf of this country.

Mark Harper: I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for that reply and my colleagues and I join him in sending our condolences to Sergeant Hollingsworth's family. The Prime Minister has refused to answer my question when I have tabled it in writing. Indeed, it is extraordinary the lengths to which he will go to avoid answering it on the Floor of the House. The Secretary of State for Defence is prepared to answer the question, not about individual soldiers, but about when and where he has visited them. Why will not the Prime Minister be as open and frank as the Secretary of State for Defence? What has the Prime Minister got to hide?

John Prescott: On every occasion, the Prime Minister has made it clear that those are private matters. That is still his position and I repeat it for him.

William Hague: I join the Deputy Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) in paying tribute to Sergeant Jonathan Hollingsworth and sending our deepest condolences to his family.
	My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and I returned from Baghdad this morning, having visited injured soldiers in Basra. We returned full of admiration for the incredible robustness and courage of our troops. It is clear that the situation they face is not getting any easier, with tens of thousands of roadside bombs this year and increasing sectarian violence. Will the Deputy Prime Minister spell out how the Government will encourage the Iraqi Government urgently to achieve an internal political settlement in Iraq?

John Prescott: The House will be pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has visited our troops, who are working in the most difficult circumstances. We all wish to express our appreciation of the bravery of their operations. However, from the right hon. Gentleman's discussions with our troops, they will have made it clear that we are working hard with the Iraqi Government and the authorities to bring about a peaceful solution to the situation in Basra.

William Hague: The politicians we met in Baghdad were adamant that only through a rapid improvement in the security situation could anything else be achieved. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that any future internal agreement could be reinforced by the early creation of an international contact group, formed initially by members of the United Nations Security Council and some neighbouring states? Is that something that the Government would support and recommend to the US Administration?

John Prescott: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has mentioned to the House on several occasions that he would like to encourage neighbouring countries to participate in such agreements. It is not easy: it is difficult. Some of those countries are playing a difficult role and encouraging the assaults and injuries that are taking place, and they could do much more to prevent them. If the right hon. Gentleman's discussions with those people are encouraging such developments, I am sure that we would welcome them.

William Hague: Finally on Iraq, the Secretary of State for Defence said on Monday that he expected that British forces there would be reduced by a matter of thousands by the end of next year. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House whether that will depend on the security situation? If so, by what criteria will the security situation be judged?

John Prescott: As the right hon. Gentleman will know from his discussions while he was in Iraq, we have made it clear that security is the most important consideration there. We are negotiating to ensure that a stable situation is achieved by military and police forces, and it is not our intention to withdraw from the country entirely. We will continue to give our support, but he will know from his discussions that a lot of good work has been done. We have achieved some stability in the area, and will continue our efforts to that end.

Mr. Speaker: It is now an open question.

David Clelland: Is my right hon. Friend aware that carers, whose earnings are limited because they have to look after people who are elderly, disabled or terminally ill, lose all of their 46 carers allowance if their earnings rise even marginally above 84 a week? Is he further aware that the latest increase in the minimum wage has put many carers in just that position, and that those people are now thousands of pounds a year worse off? Does he agree that the minimum wage was never intended to cause that problem, and will he look into it as a matter of urgency, so that carers are given a fair deal?

John Prescott: This Government can claim to be concerned about giving carers a fair deal, as we were the first to introduce a payment for them. The minimum wage has played an important part, but my hon. Friend refers to the difficulties experienced by people on the margins. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will take note of what he has said and that the matter will be discussed further.

Vincent Cable: May I add my tribute to Sergeant Hollingsworth of the Parachute Regiment?
	Can the Deputy Prime Minister help us to interpret the comments made to regional journalists by the Prime Minister on Monday? He said that people in the north should worry less about the north-south divide and regional inequalities, even though evidence from the Treasury suggests that regional inequalities in growth remain as significant as ever.

John Prescott: I am not so sure that the hon. Gentleman's analysis is correct. I recognise that he spends an awful lot of time looking at economic data, but the latest report that I have seen[Hon. Members: We can't hear.] I am sorry. I was just recognising the hon. Gentleman's ability to contribute a great deal of information to our economic debates. However, the latest analysis that I have seen suggests that the differential between north and south has been reduced, thanks to work of the regional development agencies [Interruption.] I appreciate that the RDAs were opposed by the Opposition, but they have played their part in a very successful economic policy that has led to a narrowing of the gap between north and south.

Vincent Cable: I have the benefit of the Prime Minister's comments, as well as of the pithy summary by the  Daily MirrorBlair Raps Northern Moaners. I think that he was trying to make the more subtle point that it is the differences within regions that really matter, rather than the differences between them. On that measure, can the Deputy Prime Minister explain how income and wealth inequalities have become worse under a Labour Government than they were after 17 years of Tory Government?

John Prescott: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that there are 2.5 million more people in work now, that the differential has been reduced, and that everyone is enjoying a considerably better standard of living than was the case when we came to power in 1997. The hon. Gentleman has expressed different views about these matters at different times. I have been doing some research into his record, and have discovered that both his arguments and his politics have moved about a bit. He stood for Labour in Glasgow in 1970, for the Social Democratic party in York in 1983, and for the Liberal Democrats in Twickenham in 1992. With such nimble feet, it is no wonder that he lists ballroom dancing as a hobby.

Hon. Members: More!

Louise Ellman: The Prime Minister's recent statement on slavery has been widely welcomed. Will my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister support an international remembrance day for slavery and does he back the new Liverpool slavery museum, which looks at the implications of slavery at present and in the future as well as at slavery in the past?

John Prescott: It is a very important occasion. As we approach 2007, the House should commemorate the piece of legislation that abolished slavery. We are all proud that the House was able to do that 200 years ago, but slavery has not gone away; trafficking and modern slavery are very much with us, as has been said from time to time, and I certainly support what my hon. Friend said about Liverpool. The commemoration is not only national; it is also international. Indeed, today I am going to New York to talk with the UN Secretary-General about yesterday's resolution and about how we can make the commemoration international. It is not only about slavery 200 years ago; we have to stop the terrible trade in modern slavery. I am delighted that the man who moved that legislation 200 years ago was the MP for Hull.

Engagements

James Brokenshire: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 29 November. Three years ago, my constituent James Wollacott contracted MRSA in hospital following successful surgery on his knee. Since then he has suffered significant problems with mobility and is in constant pain. He has had five corrective operations and will require further surgery in the new year. He is only 23 years old. What assurance can the Deputy Prime Minister give him and other victims of MRSA that combating hospital-acquired infections will not be compromised by the current financial pressures in the national health service?

John Prescott: The Government's record on the NHS is very good and is there for all to see. We should be proud of the amount of resources we have put into the NHS. We created the NHS and we have sustained it. Every time we try to bring in resources to make improvements, it is always opposed by the Conservatives. Make no mistake about it: we will proudly defend the NHS. It is our creation. Millions of people in this country are totally dependent on it and we shall continue to provide a high-quality national health service.

Bob Blizzard: Is it not nonsense to call for a crackdown on illegal immigration without investing in the necessary identity technology to tell us who is moving in and out of the country and who should and should not be here? Is not it hypocrisy to talk about greater protection from criminals and terrorists without giving our police the powers they ask for to do the job we want them to do?

John Prescott: That is precisely what the Government are doing, as the Home Secretary made clear and as other people said in the debate on the Queen's Speech. Security is at the heart of what the Government are bringing about, but we are concerned about the rights of citizens and the ID card is a very important part of that. On identity technology, I note that the former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee said that there is a case for ID cards. She is now chair of the Conservative security policy group. The Tories voted against ID cards but perhaps when the group reports they will listen to her advice about ID cards.

Adrian Sanders: A scheduled British Airways flight from London to Turkey costs 161. The new standard-class rail fare from London to Torquay costs a staggering 184. How does that fit into the Government's plan to encourage people to use the train and how does it fit in with the Government's oft-repeated claim that they support the British tourism industry, which is so important to Torquay and other seaside resorts?

John Prescott: However the question is posed, the reality is that more people are travelling on public transport than for decades. More people are travelling by rail than for 40 years and more people are travelling on buses. I said in 1997 that I wanted to see more people using public transport. That has been achievedanother Labour promise delivered.

Tom Levitt: My right hon. Friend's commitment to tackling the problems of global warming and climate change is well known. Does he agree that local authorities have a vital role in taking this matter forward, and will he ensure that local authorities have the advice, the resources and the motivation to tackle climate change at a local level?

John Prescott: I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks, but I have to say that when I was at this Dispatch Box nearly 10 years ago talking about Kyoto and the environment, we got no support whatever from the Opposition. This country led the way on climate change and the Kyoto agreement, and in those negotiations, and it is the only country, apart from Sweden, to more than achieve its Kyoto targets.
	We are now on the second stage. The Stern report points the way forward. The local authorities are extremely important in that and we will see that they have the resources and the back-up to make the changes necessary to bring about the climate change that we all know is required. We will be consistent in our policyunlike the sudden change that we find now among the Opposition, who have discovered climate change 10 years too late.

John Leech: The Deputy Prime Minister will be aware that lung cancer accounts for more than one in five cancer deaths. As we approach the end of lung cancer awareness month [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the hon. Gentleman speak.

John Leech: As we approach the end of lung cancer awareness month, will the Deputy Prime Minister commit the Government to support urgent research into the value of lung cancer screening, which is looking very promising in major research in the USA, so that we are equipped to deliver a national lung cancer screening programme once the techniques are fully appraised?

John Prescott: I know that there is a great deal in what the hon. Gentleman says. I think what the Government have done in the health service, particularly in regard to cancer treatment, is a very good process and has done very well, and we should be particularly proud of it. If he looks at his own area, he will find that the amount of nurses, doctors and hospital investment has improved considerably [Interruption.] Well, every constituency has benefited from those resources. The difference between the Opposition and ourselves

Mr. Speaker: Order. Would the Deputy Prime Minister speak into the microphone?

Lindsay Hoyle: I am sure that my right hon. Friend would like to congratulate the dedicated staff who work at Chorley and Preston hospitals and the quality of service that is provided. Will he ensure that work will not be transferred into the private sector, and ensure that all referrals from GPs will go to the hospitals and not to independent treatment centres? Let us keep those dedicated staff in employment at both hospitals.

John Prescott: My hon. Friend must recognise that in all these cases, first[Hon. Members: Speak into the microphone.] Well, I am talking to somebody who is sympathetic to the health service, not somebody who is against it. I do not wish to ignore the Speaker and I am sorry if I have done, Mr. Speaker. It is quite clear, as I said, on our investment in our national health service we are creating additional services, both in the public and private sectors and in the public-private partnerships, and I think the guaranteeing of the workers in those industries, as well as the services, will be maintained. I am sure we will be keeping on board the point that my hon. Friend has made.

William Hague: In the Chancellor's first Budget he took billions of pounds a year out of pension funds. What now, after nine years, is the total cumulative amount taken out of people's pension fundsstraight into the microphone, please?

John Prescott: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will tell me in his second question.

William Hague: The right hon. Gentleman is going to have to wait for the third for that. Why does the taxpayer spend 2 million a year keeping him in what one of his colleagues calls a non-job, when he cannot even answer a simple question at the Dispatch Box? There should be a number in that folder for the biggest destruction of savings by any Government in the history of this country. Surely he knows the figure for how much the pension funds have been robbed by the Chancellor. So let us ask him again: what is the figure, including all the interest and dividends that they would have earned in the meantime?

John Prescott: We will take no lectures from the Tories about pensions. They were the ones who ran down the pensions system; they were the ones who have opposed our new pensions Bill, which is intended to strengthen the pensions system so that the people of this country get a far better pension deal. Pensioners already do in respect of private and public pensions. Instead of talking about whether we have robbed the pension fund, which I totally reject, as does the Chancellor, the right hon. Gentleman should tell us what he thinks the figure is.

William Hague: Could the right hon. Gentleman get a little less excited? We do not take any lectures from a party, one of whose members brought in the biggest pension fraud in history when Robert Maxwell was sitting on those Benches. It is no good the Deputy Prime Minister saying that we oppose the pensions Billit was only published today and we have not done anything to oppose it in the last few hours.
	The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) pointed out that when the Government came to power they had one of the strongest pension provisions in Europe, and now they have some of the weakest. Some 60,000 occupational pension schemes have shut down; 120,000 people have lost some or all of their pensions; and, according to independent experts, 100 billion has been wiped off pension funds. Was not the right hon. Member for Birkenhead absolutely right?

John Prescott: I notice that the right hon. Gentleman has still not given us the figure that he says we robbed from pension funds. On the Maxwell pension fund that he talked about, let me tell him that it took this Government to bring in legislation to correct that abuse and that it was the previous Government who allowed pension holidays [Interruption.] Yes, the previous Tory Administration allowed those pension holidays, which have caused many of the problems in our pensions today. I have to tell him, for all the clever remarks that he might make about these matters, he is certainly not convincing the electorate. If we look at the polls today, it is clear that the honeymoon for the right hon. Gentleman and his friend is over. I notice from the papers and on television today that the Tories have now brought in a new person to get people to vote Tory, and I could not help noticing that the person is named, as I saw on the website, Mr. Tosser. I do not know which person on the Front Bench this man is modelled on, but let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that I always thought that his party was full of them, and that is why they have lost three elections.

Hon. Members: More!

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Barbara Keeley: Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the opening next weekend of the critical care unit at Christie hospital? A further welcome development at the Christie is a young adult oncology unit. Patients and former patients of the unit are visiting Parliament today. Will my right hon. Gentleman congratulate the patients and staff of the unit on their ID card scheme? They have funding nationwide to launch the scheme, which will help young patients whose appearance is altered by their treatment and ensure that door staff of public houses do not turn them away because of their dress code.

John Prescott: The House should welcome the fact that the Christie hospital, a specialist cancer hospital, remains open, despite what was said during the election campaign by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech), who campaigned together with the Tories on the basis that this facility would close down or not be opened. It has, in fact, been opened this week and is now serving the people of Manchester. If the hon. Gentleman had been a bit more honest, he would have thanked the Labour Government not only for the continuing promise to keep the facility, but for the 11,000 more nurses, 1,000 more consultants and 600 more GPs that are serving his area and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley (Barbara Keeley). That is a Labour Government in action. We are delivering, and the people in this country are grateful for it.

Jeffrey M Donaldson: In an age when employees of our national airline cannot even display a Christian cross without being suspended from their employment, is there not a case for saying that Christians in this country find themselves increasingly under pressure? With the sexual orientation regulations, many Christian leaders are speaking out against what the Government are doing in putting the Christian Church under pressure. In Northern Ireland, those regulations are being imposed against the wishes of the vast majority of people in that part of the United Kingdom. Is it not time that the Government caught themselves on and started to listen to the majority in this country, who are fed up with being discriminated against as Christians?

John Prescott: I am not a religious man, but I always understood that religion was about tolerance. There is not much tolerance being shown in what the hon. Gentleman has said. It is a pity that we do not show more tolerance to different cultures and different religions. We would be a lot better off for it.

Gordon Prentice: Has my friend had the opportunity to read early-day motion 327 on the Government's consultation on Trident? Will he give an undertaking, as Deputy Prime Minister and deputy leader, that he will use his best offices to persuade the national executive committee to consult Labour party members and publish the results

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have to stop the hon. Gentleman.

Simon Burns: Following a positive and helpful meetingfor which I am extremely gratefulwith the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), concerning the Broomfield hospital private finance initiative scheme, and given that the conclusion is so tantalisingly close, can the Government do anything to get a decision, one way or another, before Christmas?

John Prescott: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of that question. I think that he understands that some issues have been identified in relation to the financing of the scheme. Following the meeting last week that I think he attended with the trust, it has now submitted its final report to the strategic health authority for endorsement, as I think he is aware. The trust, the strategic health authority and the Department of Health will meet again in early December and there will be a final decision before the end of the year, for which I know he has been pressing for some time. I also thank him for his support for the PFI. Since 1997, more than 9 billion has been allocated through PFI schemes, helping us to undertake the largest hospital-building programme in our country's history. That must be welcome.

Anne Snelgrove: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for those on low incomes, credit unions provide a safe way of saving regularly and borrowing at a low interest rate? Will he join me in condemning companies such as Provident Personal Credit, which have offered loans at 177 per cent. interest to my constituents who have lost all their Christmas savings with the collapse of Farepak? At those rates, 300 is paid back at 495.

John Prescott: The point made by my hon. Friend causes many of us great concern. Those loans are made to desperate people at very high interest rates. Often they are not well aware of that. The Farepak situation has brought that to our attention. There are people who are driven into poverty and that makes the circumstances more difficult. The investigation into Farepak being run by the Department of Trade and Industry will hopefully give us some indication of changes that might help in those situations. The Treasury Committee, which is looking at the matter, has also made certain recommendations. It is undoubtedly true that those people in the most unfortunate circumstances, suffering great deprivation, should not be exploited in such a way.

John Greenway: The flooded homes in Malton and Norton in my constituency, which the Deputy Prime Minister kindly visited during the October 2000 floods, now have the benefit of good flood defences, but there are communities the length and breadth of Britain, including in my constituency, that still do not have the protection that they need. They are exposed to a serious flood risk. He will know that the Stern review has predicted that river and sea levels will rise. In those circumstances, does he not think that the cut in Environment Agency funding for flood defences was a mistake and should be reversed, and that funding should be increased in the comprehensive spending review so that communities have the protection that they need and deserve?

John Prescott: The hon. Gentleman will recall that when I visited his constituency there was extreme concern about the amount of resources going into flood protectionand rightly so. Following those meetings, we have put in record amounts, with an increase of something like 35 per cent. in real terms from the level in 1996-97 to 600 million in 2005-06 [ Interruption. ] The cutting to which he referswe are being reminded about that in a sedentary interventioncomes on top of that tremendous increase. We inherited a reduced budget for flood control in 1997 and we increased it by 35 per cent. One or two changes have been made at the margins, but, as can be seen in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, the investment in flood control has undoubtedly been to the benefit of people who suffered from floods for so long. There is still a lot to do, but we are putting record investment into these areas.

Alasdair McDonnell: Does the Deputy Prime Minister share my concerns about the desperate plight of those people who have been ripped off in the Farepak scandal? Given that the family fund closes today and is very far short of the amount needed, will he use his good offices to persuade his colleagues in the Cabinet that the Government should top up that family fund a bit further to ensure that those people are not left without a Christmas?

John Prescott: I note the point made by the hon. Gentleman. I think that 5 million has been raised so far and further calls have gone out to some of the companies involved to make a greater contribution. I understand that the debt is in the region of 35 million, which is an awful lot of money. I hope that the inquiry that is being conducted by the DTI will give us some idea of how we can avoid such a thing in the future. I will certainly pass on the hon. Gentleman's remarks about whether the Government can give any more in such circumstances.

Point of Order

Lembit �pik: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On 13 December, we once again see a conflict between the programming of Wales and Northern Ireland business, with a sitting of the Welsh Grand Committee and the Second Reading of an important Northern Ireland Bill occurring at the same time. How can the business managers think that that is reasonable, given that at least two Ministers are directly involved in Welsh and Northern Irish business? Is there anything that you can do, Mr. Speaker, to prevent such disrespectful and ham-fisted programming of Welsh and Northern Irish business at once from happening again?

Mr. Speaker: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the usual channels. There is a Liberal Whip, and the matter should be taken up through the usual channels with the Liberal Whip.

Orders of the Day

Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mike O'Brien: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	I welcome to yet another debate on this issue many of the aficionados who attended the previous debates. I am sure that we will cover much of the same territory, important as it is.
	Fraud does enormous damage to our national economy and the Government are determined to modernise our criminal justice system to tackle it. Our policy has four main strands. We recently took through the House the Fraud Act 2006, which will create a statutory offence of fraud and modernise much of our law on deception. Secondly, the Government have also carried out a cross-departmental review of fraud to examine the prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution and punishment of fraud. We published a report in July, and consultation finished on 27 October. We are now considering our response.
	Thirdly, new protocols and procedures for our courts have been introduced by the prosecution authorities, the Attorney-General, the Lord Chief Justice and others to improve the management of large criminal cases. The Bill is the fourth element. It will reform our criminal justice system to enable it more effectively to try a small number of serious and complex frauds without a jury.

Philip Davies: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: In just a moment.
	Fraud takes many forms. It can be complexinternational fraud, involving vast sums of money, can be committed by bankers, accountants, con men and even lawyers. The evidence can run to thousands of documents. Alternatively, the fraud can be on a smaller scalebenefit fraud is an obvious example. Our criminal justice system prosecutes benefit and minor fraud with efficiency, but it has found it more difficult to prosecute complex and serious white-collar fraud. Complex cases can last a year or more. Although the success of the Serious Fraud Office means that convictions are secured, contested trials can be long-drawn-out and difficult.

Philip Davies: rose

Henry Bellingham: rose

Mike O'Brien: I shall give way in a moment.
	The Government believe that the criminal justice system needs to be as effective at dealing with complex white-collar fraudsters as it is at tackling blue-collar fraud. As part of our wider package of policies, this Bill will help to ensure that that happens. I give way to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).

Philip Davies: Is the Minister really saying that he has such a low opinion of the abilities of the great British public that the Government feel that they are unable ever to muster 12 people who can understand a fraud trial?

Mike O'Brien: It is not our case that jurors are not clever enough to understand complex fraud cases. That is a straw man that the Opposition seem to put up each time we debate this issue. That is not our claim. I want to go into the matter of jurors, but the point that the hon. Gentleman makes does not reflect our approach to this issue.

Henry Bellingham: What is the difference between a very complicated fraud case and a very complicated murder case? For generations, correctly directed juries have been reaching safe verdicts on both types of cases.

Mike O'Brien: Complex and serious fraud cases have been a particular problem in the courts for a long time. Murder cases, by and large, can be resolved relatively quickly and the issues are often very straightforward. Complex and serious fraud cases are an entirely different matter, with cases lasting for six months, a year or more, having multiple defendants and involving the discussion of complex issues. We want to ensure that we tackle those issues in a sensible and straightforward way.

David Winnick: Although I have reservations about this measure, I will vote for it on Second Reading. My great concern, however, is that if this measure is carried into law, as it probably will be, it should not escalate into a situation where jurors will not be used in other criminal cases.

Mike O'Brien: If I understand my hon. Friend correctly, he wants to know if there is any wish by the Government to extend the provision to a range of other cases, and the answer is that there are no plans to do so. It is our view that there is a long history of problems in this area of law.
	For many years, there have been calls for serious and complex fraud trials to be conducted by judges. Back in 1986, the influential Roskill report recommended that these cases should be tried by a special fraud tribunal, consisting of a judge and a small number of specially qualified lay members instead of a jury. In 1998, most respondents to a consultation paper, Juries and serious fraud trials, broadly supported replacing the jury in serious and complex fraud trials. In October 2001, Lord Justice Auld considered the issue in his review of the criminal justice courts in England and Wales. He recognised the benefits of trial by a single judge but suggested instead a tribunal that included people with business and financial experience.
	The Government sought views on the issue in a general consultation on the Auld report following the publication of our White Paper Justice for All, and after taking account of comments decided in favour of judge-alone trials.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: My hon. and learned Friend mentioned the extensive protocol to deal with long fraud cases that came into effect on 27 March last year. One of its effects undoubtedly will be that most of the issues that lengthen these cases will be tried before a jury has even been empanelled. That protocol has been in effect for just over a year. Why did not the Government wait to see the effect of that before they introduced the Bill?

Mike O'Brien: When Roskill made recommendations, the view taken by the Government at the time was that new legislationsetting up the Serious Fraud Officeand a number of other steps would deal with the problem of serious and complex fraud cases. They thought that they did not have to make the change recommended by Roskill. In the past two decades, experience has shown that although such administrative changes are welcome and have the effect of speeding up trials, they are in themselves insufficient to deal with the overall problem. The Government's view, therefore, is that section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is the way forward. It will ensure that we deal with such cases more effectively.

Dominic Grieve: rose

Jonathan Djanogly: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: I am still dealing with the question asked by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), and after that I must give way to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve).
	To continue, we welcome the protocol, which is an important way of speeding up some of the handling of more lengthy and complex cases, but our view is that it is insufficient of itself.

Dominic Grieve: Will the Solicitor-General confirm that the number of cases per annum that will be covered by the provision is tiny? The figure given was half a dozen or so. Given that we have a new protocol and the new Fraud Act 2006, which is supposed to simplify the trial of fraud, and given thatas I am sure he acceptsmany trials, such as health and safety cases, now require juries to consider massive amounts of technical documentation, why have the Government singled out that discrete area to get rid of juries? Why would they do so, unless the measure is to be the first foot in the door for a much more general attack on the jury system?

Mike O'Brien: First, the measure is not the first foot in the door, as the hon. Gentleman put itfar from itand it is not a general attack; that is complete nonsense. However, he is right to say that it will affect only a small number of cases. The figure is variously estimated, but it is certainly put at fewer than 20. The Serious Fraud Office considered the number of cases over the past five years that lasted longer than six months and, of those 26 cases, only about six lasted more than a year. It believes that, under its way of handling the issue, about six cases a year would probably be affected by the measure. I do not want to be tied to a particular figure because, as the hon. Gentleman knows well, in the end it will be a decision for the Lord Chief Justice and those making the decision in individual cases. However, our estimate is that the number will be between half a dozenthat is the more likely figureand 15 to 20 cases.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mike O'Brien: May I just answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield? I shall then give way to some others. We want to ensure that 99.9 per cent., or 28,000, cases tried in the Crown court will continue to be tried by a jury. The number of cases affected by the change will be tiny, compared with the 28,000 contested cases that are tried before juries in the Crown court each year. It is worth making that point.

Jonathan Djanogly: The Solicitor-General continually says that experience has shown that juries should be got rid of, but today he has not shownand the Government have not shown to datehow getting rid of juries will improve the situation. Before they get rid of hundreds of years of British history, they should have to prove that, and they have not yet done so.

Mike O'Brien: If the hon. Gentleman will give me a little time to proceed with my speech, I suspect that he will find that we have a great deal of evidence that, in the past, the House has found the measure to be the appropriate way of making the change.
	I believe that the House will support the Bill and agree that it is the way forward. Judges, too, have taken that view in a whole series of cases. In the Maxwell case, Mr. Justice Buckley talked about his need to sever cases. He said:
	When using his powers of severance the trial judge recognised that it would prevent the prosecution from putting before the jury the full weight of the case.
	He said that accepting the submission that the second trial should not take place
	is to accept that in a serious and complex fraud, the limitations of jury trial prevent the prosecution from presenting a case which fairly and adequately represents the fraud alleged. If that is so then jury trial is unfair and inappropriate.
	Other judges have expressed similar views.

Paul Farrelly: As my hon. and learned Friend rightly said, calls for the special treatment of a small number of cases have been made for more than a decade. He referred to Maxwell, and I have with me a copy of the  Financial Times from January 1996, which carries the headline, Maxwell brothers cleared of fraud. I covered the trial at length when I was a member of the press, and that decision came as a surprise to a great many people. Many people in the fraud prosecution service think that it is high time that the Government addressed the problem, as they are now doing.

Mike O'Brien: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. It is necessary to address those issues.

Dominic Grieve: rose

Mike O'Brien: Will the hon. Gentleman bear with me while I reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly)? Let us calm down the vibrations and not become too excited, as we have discussed these issues before. They are important, and it is right that we consider the arguments calmly and carefully.
	The view taken by judges in a series of cases is that the issue must be addressed, which is why the Government introduced the proposals. When the Blue Arrow case was under way, the trial judge, Mr. Justice McKinnon, had to sever the case into two trials to make it manageable for the jury. He said that
	no jury should be asked to cope with what this jury had had to endure.
	The Court of Appeal said that
	there is a significant risk of a miscarriage of justice resulting from the volume and complexity of the evidence.
	It noted that the jury retired with 956 pages of exhibits and such recollections as they may have had of the evidence given by 94 prosecution witnesses seven to 11 months earlier, and of the final speeches of counsel, which were delivered 59 to 65 days earlier. As a result of that long deliberation, in 2003 the House passed section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act.

Dominic Grieve: May I touch on the point about specimen counts? As a result of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, it is possible to hold a trial of specimen counts by jury, and a trial of remaining counts by the judge alone. The Government do not appear to have taken that into account in introducing the proposals, so I would be grateful if the Solicitor-General dealt with the issue.

Mike O'Brien: The Government did take that into accountafter all, we introduced the legislation to enable such trials. However, we need to deal more broadly with serious and complex fraud cases. Parliament indicated in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that it wanted to deal with the problem, and we believe that it should do so.

Keith Vaz: rose

Mike O'Brien: I am afraid that I shall not give way as I wish to make progress. However, I will accept interventions later.
	Section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act provided for judges in serious or complex fraud cases to order, following an application by the prosecution, that the trial should be conducted without a jury. The judge must be satisfied that the length or complexity of the case is likely to make the trial so burdensome on the jury that the interests of justice require serious consideration to be given to the need to conduct the trial without a jury. An important safeguard is that an order for a judge-only trial can be made only with the consent of the Lord Chief Justice. There are other safeguards. The prosecution must believe that the criteria are met, and the judge must agree. Furthermore, the Lord Chief Justice must grant his consent.
	When that legislation was passed by Parliament, its implementation was subject to a requirement for an affirmative resolution of both Houses. That unusual requirement was inserted into the Bill in its closing stages, just before it was enacted in November 2003. It was not the Government's intention that it should constitute a permanent obstacle to commencing section 43, because in that case there would have been little purpose in enacting the section at all. In any event, when the matter was brought back before the House earlier this year, an affirmative resolution was passed by the House. It became apparent, however, that the combined Opposition would use their majority in the other place to frustrate that affirmative resolution. Therefore, seeking to move forward by consensus, the Government opened further discussions with the Opposition to see whether we could reach an agreement about the way to deal with serious and complex fraud cases. After discussions between the Front-Bench teams, it became clear that no agreement was likely to be forthcoming.
	The Government take the view that the time has come to give effect to the provision that Parliament passed in 2003, which was likely to be frustrated in the other place. We believe that, as we indicated in our manifesto, reform of trials in serious fraud cases is necessary. That is why we have introduced the Bill.

Several hon. Members: rose

Keith Vaz: Will the Solicitor-General tell us a little about the consultation process? I recall that the last time the matter came before the House a seminar was organisedattended by members of the Governmentand out of that came the present proposals. Apart from the discussions that he mentioned, have there been any further meetings involving members of the profession and others to discuss this important constitutional change?

Mike O'Brien: There has been discussion of the change over a long period, involving submissions to Lord Justice Auld and, before that, to Lord Roskill, and also submissions in response to White Papers that have been published. The various professions and members of the public have therefore had opportunities to express their view over a long period. There was a long consultation before the 2003 Act. Since the order was passed by the House but not proceeded with in another place, there have been discussions with the Front-Bench teams of the other parties to see whether there was a possibility of compromise that would enable us to proceed with what we believe to be a necessary proposal. We were unable to secure that level of agreement, which is why we are where we are.

Edward Garnier: The Solicitor-General says that there are three safeguardsthe prosecution must persuade the judge, the judge must be persuaded, and the Lord Chief Justice must give his consent. Presumably, the judge will be persuaded after oral argument and possibly paper submissions as well. In order for the Lord Chief Justice to give informed consent, am I right in thinking that he, too, will have to have an oral hearing in front of him, or he will have to read himself into the case? If he is not properly apprised of the issues in the case, his consent will be formal only. Can the hon. and learned Gentleman assure me that the safeguards that he suggests are so good will indeed be so good?

Mike O'Brien: To some extent, we will have to rely on the good offices of the person appointed as Lord Chief Justice, and I think that we can do that. We do not envisage an oral hearing. The aim would be for the Lord Chief Justice to look at the facts of the case and take a view, bearing in mind the view of the judge who heard the initial application, which can take place with submissions by the various parties. The Lord Chief Justice will then have to give his consent to the process. That is a strong safeguard to ensure that the procedure will take place only in cases that fit the criteria and in which a jury is not necessary.

Simon Hughes: The Solicitor-General knows that the 2003 Act would not have been passed had agreement not been reached to require an order later on. Since that agreement three years ago, we have had the report of the Jubilee line case stating that jury trial was not a factor in the failure of the case, and a juror saying that jurors entirely understood the case. Has the hon. and learned Gentleman any new evidence from new sources that suggests that with all the other changes that are meant to shorten trials, the absence of juries will be of benefit? Has there been any new evidence over the past three years to support his argument?

Mike O'Brien: The House has considered the matter since 2003 and taken a view on it, as it did only a few months ago. As regards evidence, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the Jubilee line case. He is right to say that the jurors said that they understood the evidence in that case. It is not our argument that jurors are incapable of doing that. It is our view, however, that the report on the Jubilee line case makes it clear that both during the trial and subsequently, a number of jurors suffered considerable stresses as a result of being involved in such a long and complex case. The employment of some of them was affected, and some have experienced difficult circumstances since then.
	Although it is not clear that the Jubilee line case would ever have met the criteria for section 43that is the view that the inspector reachedthe stresses on the jurors were considerable. With the report of the inspector on the case, we had a great opportunity to see what happens in such cases. Obviously, a jury cannot be questioned during the course of a case which has come to a result. That one did not, so the inspectorate was able to ask the jurors what happened and how they felt it progressed. That does not provide evidence that such a case would necessarily fit the criteria of section 43, which the inspector doubted, but it tells us that the stresses on a juror can be substantial not only during a case, but subsequently.

Douglas Hogg: The Solicitor-General has drawn attention to the stresses. I have no doubt that there were stresses on the jurorsI have the report of the inspectorbut stresses occur in many long cases involving terrorism or conspiracies. Once we rely on stresses as constituting a good argument for doing away with jury trials in fraud cases, that precedent will certainly be extended to many other classes of case.

Mike O'Brien: We have no intention at this stage[Hon. Members: At this stage?]of taking any of the steps that the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggests. We have no plans to do so. Let me be very clear about that. Hon. Members ought to take cognisance of the burden on jurors. We cannot ignore it and pretend that we can put people in situations where their lives are massively disrupted for a year or more, and where their jobs may be lost, their promotion hampered and their relations with their employers damaged, as we saw in the Jubilee line case report. We need to take such factors into account. I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not agree.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mike O'Brien: I must make progress, but I shall give way to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes), as he has stood up on several occasions.

David Burrowes: May I press the Solicitor-General further on the up-to-date evidence on the special treatment proposed in the Bill? Let us not go back to Blue Arrow or the Jubilee line. In the past year, since the protocol was put in place determining criminal procedure rules, about six cases have come up. Which of those has not benefited sufficiently from the new rules to justify the current proposals?

Mike O'Brien: It is not a matter of cases benefiting from the rules. The rules will benefit all subsequent cases. I have repeatedly stated that our programme for dealing with fraud involves changes in the law, which we have introduced, and changes in procedures, such as the protocols that the hon. Gentleman mentions, which need to be made. It involves the fraud review, which is examining the broader aspects of fraudthe investigation of it, the prosecution of it and how that can be done more effectively. Putting in place legislation such as the Bill will enable us better to deal with the most serious, complex and lengthy fraud cases in a more effective way and bring about justice more effectively.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: rose

Dominic Grieve: rose

Mike O'Brien: I have given way to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield on two occasions. I shall give way once more, and then I shall make progress.

Dominic Grieve: The Solicitor-General has touched on an important issue. As he is well aware, many trials that have lasted a long time would never qualify for trial by judge alone, even under the Government's proposals. For instance, the Jubilee line case, which is the subject of much comment, would almost certainly have been sent to be tried by a jury. It was not expected to be very long and was not very complex. Could the Solicitor-General be a bit more precise about the sorts of cases that he wants to cover? Otherwise, we are left with the impression that the Government's proposals are designed to be much wider in scope.

Mike O'Brien: We are proposing what we say we are proposing. Cases such as Blue Arrow, Maxwell, Da Costa, Talbot village trust and Cushnie involved the sorts of issues that might have been subject to a change as a result of section 43. A range of cases could be covered, mainly those that are very lengthy. The hon. Gentleman is right about the Jubilee line case. The inspectorate said that it might well not have fitted within the criteria, but that is not the point; other more complex and difficult cases might have done so.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: rose

Mike O'Brien: I will give way to my hon. and learned Friend later, but I need to make some progress.
	Our criminal justice system needs to deal effectively and fairly with all kinds of crime, but sometimes it fails to do so in the most serious and complicated frauds because defendants do not face trial on charges that adequately reflect the full criminality of the accusations that are made against them. That is the key point. From time to time, trials collapse under the pressure of evidence, with the result that justice is not done and the taxpayer is left to meet substantial costs. The current position is that the greater the scale and complexity of the fraud, the less likely it is to result in a successful prosecution. That cannot be right. We cannot accept a double standard whereby petty frauds are easy to prosecute and frauds on a grand scale which, although small in number, can have an impact on many victims are too difficult to prosecute. Despite attempts to keep trials within reasonable bounds, complex fraud cases often last for many months. In the four years from 2002 to 2005, the Serious Fraud Office reported that 26 fraud trials lasted for more than six months, six of which lasted for more than a year.
	The prosecution and the courts already do much to keep the length of trials to a minimum. We welcome the Lord Chief Justice's protocol of March 2005, which will promote robust and well-informed case management. That will help, but it is not an adequate answer of itself. The complexity and potential length of some serious and complex fraud trials still resists the best efforts of all involved to reduce the burden on the jury. In order to make them manageable, trials are too often carved up in a way that prevents the full criminality of the fraud from being exposed in the trial. That cannot serve the interests of justice. Cases are split into separate trials by the severing of indictments. Even then, it is sometimes necessary to restrict the material put before the court, in order to make it manageable and comprehensible to a jury. Evidence is pared down and charges reduced to the main charges. Secondary defendants, who should perhaps be prosecuted notwithstanding, are not brought to justice because it would complicate the trial too much. The result can still be the worst of all worldsenormously long trials that are intolerable for the unfortunate jurors, but do not enable the full criminality alleged in the most serious fraud cases to be presented to the court.

Jonathan Djanogly: Will the Solicitor-General give way on that point?

Mike O'Brien: No.
	The Government's proposal for judges to try cases without a jury is not a general attack on jury trialson the contrary. As I said, there were 28,000 trials before a jury in the course of the past year. The provision will affect a few trials each year; 99.9 per cent. of jury trials will be unaffected. Furthermore, the Government are looking to take steps to examine the issue of Diplock courts in Northern Ireland. If we can do that, there will more jury trials than ever. In fact, I am a great believer in jury trials; I was a criminal lawyer before I came here. They are a good way of deciding guilt or innocence in the Crown court.
	That said, the vast majority of trials take place in magistrates courts and do not involve a jury, so there is no immutable principle that we must always have a jury to do justice. Every day, in criminal courts across the country, people elect in either-way cases to allow district judgesjudges sitting aloneto decide guilt or innocence in trials. If we went down to Horseferry road magistrates court or to other London courts today, we could well see that happening. It often happens, although not in summary-only cases, with the consent of the accused. No one should argue that justice is not being done because no jury is present. Many of these cases result in people going to prison. Thousands of people are tried in this way every year. Someone who gets arrested for benefit fraud and charged with deception can be tried by a judge sitting alone, so it surely cannot be said that a senior judge sitting alone could not do justice in the case of someone arrested for a serious white collar crime.
	Is the argument that having a jury is a great principle only if it happens in a particular kind of courtthe Crown court? Either that is a principle or it is not. Daily in this country, justice is delivered in trials before district judges or before a single judge in our civil courts. In our view, a High Court judge can do justice for that very small number of white-collar fraudsters. Juries are right for some cases, but not for every case. The real issue is how we can best do justice. Where justice can be delivered in a better way, we should act on that. Our argument is that in a few cases a year out of the 28,000only in the most serious and complex fraud casesthere are good reasons for saying that justice can be done by a judge sitting alone.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: This is now a rather antique intervention on the subject of the Jubilee line. As my hon. and learned Friend knows, weeks before that trial collapsed, defence counsel wrote to the Attorney-General to point out that that was going to happen. It had nothing to do with juries; it happened because a lot of issues that should have been sorted out years before the jury members were empanelled were being dealt with while they were there. It was a classic case of awful case management, and the Attorney-General was written to about it. On 21 June I asked my hon. and learned Friend, in this very place, to find out and to let me know what steps the Attorney-General took. He said that he would but has, no doubt inadvertently, forgotten to do so. Can he tell me now?

Mike O'Brien: The Attorney-General set all that out in a statement in the other place. If my hon. and learned Friend has not yet had an opportunity to read it, I will ensure that a copy of the relevant  Hansard is brought to his attention. I realise that he will be a religious student only of this place's  Hansard, but sometimes statements in another place make helpful reading too.

Edward Garnier: The Solicitor-General said that lengthy cases place an undue burden on the jury. However, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) will testify, lengthy cases take place week in, week out at the central criminal court, the Old Bailey, sometimes lasting for monthsyet the Government do not suggest that they should be removed from the jury system. [Hon. Members: Not yet.] They have no present plans. What principle singles out fraud cases but does not draw in lengthy terrorist or other criminal cases at the Old Bailey?

Mike O'Brien: There are two key issues. First, this area has a long history, whereas others do not, and we do not intend to move into those. Secondly, some of these cases involve very complex evidence having to be presented to the jurors. The jurors on fraud cases sometimes face the physical and mental task of listening to complex and obtuse evidence involving a large number of defendants making interlinked financial transactions over a number of years, with detailed cross-examination [ Interruption.] I am trying to answer the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), but if he insists on chuntering on, he is not going to hear me. Either he is serious about making this point, in which case he will listen to the answer, or he is not.

Edward Garnier: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: No. Perhaps I can answer the hon. and learned Gentleman's question, then he can intervene if he really wants to. Let us have a sensible discussion, rather than heckling from the sidelines.
	Jurors often have to listen to somewhat complex, obtuse evidence involving a large number of defendants making interlinked financial transactions over a number of years, with detailed cross-examination requiring constant cross-referencing to documents and records. Many of the complex deals and financial transactions that can be involved in serious and complex fraud cases will be outside the experience of members of the public, facing jurors with a steep learning curve to master the financial theory as well as the practical evidence.

Edward Garnier: One good chunter deserves another, I would have thought. I thought that the Solicitor-General's case at the outset was that he was not advancing what I would rudely describe as the stupid jury argument, yet he just seems to have done that. He must make up his mind: either juries are or are not capable, and either the Government's case is or is not based on that argument. He cannot have it both ways.

Mike O'Brien: I am not advancing what the hon. and learned Gentleman describes as the stupid jury argumentnot at all. I want to make it very clear that it is not our claim that juries are incapable of understanding complex fraud cases. What we say is that, in the words of Lord Justice Auld, the length of such trialssome of which last for several monthsrepresents an unreasonable intrusion on jurors' personal lives, and, where they are in employment, their working lives, going way beyond the conventional requirement for such duty of about two weeks' service. Juries can cope with long trials, but having to sit on a jury for six months, or sometimes more than a year, is an excessive burden on members of the public. That is my first point.
	My second point is

Humfrey Malins: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: I am still answering the hon. and learned Member for Harborough. If hon. Members calm down a little, we will get through this.
	Secondly, our criminal justice system requires juries to listen to the presentation of oral evidence, and there is sometimes very complex and obscure evidence that requires knowledge of complex financial dealings. A jury trial, with its oral tradition, is not always the best place to expose and explain that level of complexity, in my view.

Douglas Hogg: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: No.
	As I have already said, the need to present oral evidence in trials has led the courts to divide cases into two or three trials so that the number of defendants and the complexity of the case before a jury is reduced. I have already referred to the comments of Mr. Justice McKinnon, who talked about having to split cases to make them manageable for a jury, and suggested that no jury should be asked to cope with what a jury had had to cope with in a particular case of his. As the Court of Appeal has indicated, there is a risk of a miscarriage of justice. So my second point is about the level of the burden on juries.
	My third point is that, as Lord Justice Auld said, all this has the effect of making juries even less representative of the community than they are already. The court often excuses many people who would otherwise be able to make a short-term arrangement to do their civic duty. Long trials are a great personal strain and burden on everyone involved.

Humfrey Malins: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: I am still dealing with the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough. It was a serious point, and I am dealing with it.
	As far as we are concerned, the juries that are used in these long casesas they have been in the pasthave sometimes lacked a broad representative capacity. The general idea is that we choose a jury randomly, and that it is broadly representative of the public. However, because of the nature of this kind of trial, we have not always been able to ensure that that is the case.

Paul Farrelly: I want to intervene on my hon. and learned Friend on the point about the balance and the representativeness of juries, which is already causing much false indignation and misrepresentation on the Opposition Benches. I covered the Blue Arrow case; it was my first journalistic assignment. It was strange, because I was in the scribblers' dock when one of my former colleagues, an investment banker called Nick Wells, appeared in the dock because he had worked for County NatWest. I remember clearly that a way in which professional jurors got off doing jury service in great numbers was either to declare to the judge that they were account holders at the NatWest bank or to go and open such an account. A large number of white-collar jurors disappeared from that court through jury selection, and there was a serious question about the representativeness of the jury.

Mike O'Brien: My hon. Friend has experience of that particular case, and others have had experience in other cases. The view of the Opposition appears to be that we should just ignore this problem and pretend that it does not exist. They seem to think that we should not address it, and just get away from it. We are saying, however, that we will address the issue and put in place a system for trying the most complex casesa small numberwhich will work more effectively.

David Heath: Some internal contradictions seem to be opening up in the Solicitor-General's case. First he said that the stupidityto use a word that was used elsewhereof the jury was not a factor, but he went on to say that juries had difficulty in understanding the complexities of such cases. Secondly, he said that the only criterion that is moving the Government to take this action is the length of the cases and the stress that that places on juriesyet the measure will not apply to equally long and equally stressful cases in other parts of the judicial system. Thirdly, he said that because a jury that would be available for such a long time might be unrepresentative, he intends to remove the jury, so that a wholly representative judge can hear the case instead. Is that the sum total of his argument?

Mike O'Brien: No. The hon. Gentleman has traduced my argument quite badly. I did not argue that juries could not understand the case; I have been clear in not arguing that. I said that the way in which such cases can develop is burdensome, and that we as Members of Parliament need to take account of the burden that we place on ordinary members of the public. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not want to do that, but we have a responsibility to ensure that we do.

Dominic Grieve: Will the Solicitor-General give way?

Mike O'Brien: Not at the moment.
	We do not want to deal with the issue of unrepresentative juries by having an unrepresentative judge. That suggestion again traduces my argument. The argument of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) is that juries are somehow going to be representative of the man in the street, of members of the public. The evidence suggests, however, that that is not as clear an outcome in these very long cases as he might like to think. If there are better ways of conducting complex serious fraud cases, we should deal with them in this way.
	When a trial takes place before a judge alone, evidence that would have been presented orally to a jury can simply be read by the judge

Dominic Grieve: rose

Mike O'Brien: I have been generous in giving way to the hon. Gentleman, but I will do so again.

Dominic Grieve: I am grateful to the Solicitor-General, because he is now touching on an important area that he hinted at earlier but has not clarified. What is the procedure to be in these trials by judge alone? He has just suggested that there will be a shortening of time because judges can go off and read large amounts of material, which will not be presented formally to them in front of the defendant, to cut their way through the process. If that is indeed what the Solicitor-General is contemplating, I do not think that fairness in the trial system will be maintained. I have serious doubts that there is any shortening of time to be had. I would have thought that all evidence would have to be presented in open court, and either read out loud or presented orally in the usual way. If the Solicitor-General is suggesting something else, the House should be told about it.

Mike O'Brien: In our trials, arguments must be set out orally, at length, before a jury, and those arguments can be dealt with much more expeditiously by a judge. A judge will, for example, be able to curtail speeches by barristers who go on at great length, in a way that would be impossible when a jury is involved.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mike O'Brien: While I am on the subject of great length, let me say that I have now been on my feet for about 40 minutes, and the reason for that is that I have been very generous in giving way. I now wish to conclude.

Humfrey Malins: Will the Solicitor-General give way just once more?

Mike O'Brien: I will finish my point. Before I finish my speech, I promise the hon. Gentleman that I will give way to him, but only to him.

Douglas Hogg: That is discrimination. What about our human rights?

Mike O'Brien: In response to the sedentary intervention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I, or rather you, Mr. Speaker, will be the judge of the rights of Back Benchers in this case. Let me not usurp the right of the arbiter.
	A judge can curtail lengthy speeches by windbag journalists [Interruption.] Sorry, I meant windbag lawyers, although perhaps journalists too might be involved; one never knows. By doing that, the judge can ensure that the trial proceeds much more expeditiously. Most importantly, there will be less need for cases to be severed, or for sample charges. On the whole, cases could be dealt with more expeditiouslybut shorter trials, however desirable, are not our primary objective. We want to enable justice to be done by exposing the whole criminality of the case in a single trial. If trials are short, that will be a bonus.
	Rather than having a case severed, or some of the charges dropped, we believe that judge-led trials will enable the full culpability of defendants to be exposed in court and the crime to be considered in the round. Yes, longer indictments will be involved, and cases will be examined in one trial rather than being severed into two or three. That may well lead to some trials taking as long as they do at present, but without the intolerable pressure on individual members of a jury. If found guilty, defendants could also be punished for all that they have done, whereas we sometimes find now that trials are severed and they are punished for part of it here and part there, and the whole of the evidence is never exposed before members of a single court. The point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield that some do not believe that trials by judge alone will be shorter is not as telling as he thinks, as the aim has always been to ensure that the full culpability of individuals can be brought before the court, which is currently being prevented in some cases. He seems to want that full culpability not to go before a single court, but our view is that it should.
	Section 43 offers a further all-important advantage to defendantsa reasoned verdict. Defendants convicted by jury are not at present entitled to know the reasons for the verdict on them. When a trial is conducted without a jury, and a court convicts a defendant, the judge will be required to give a full reasoned verdict as soon as is reasonably practical after a conviction, and to demonstrate that all proper procedures have been followed.

Humfrey Malins: A few minutes ago, the Solicitor-General was telling us about a fraud case that he argued was eminently suitable for trial by judge alonea case of huge complexity that lasted many months and involved complicated documents and financial transactions all over the world. I was involved in a case in the Isleworth Crown court a few years ago that was equally complex, equally long and involved equally complicated financial documents, but it was on a drugs charge. Would he have that case tried by a judge alone?

Mike O'Brien: We do not intend drugs cases to be dealt with in that way, but some cases brought by the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office, which involve substantial financial transactions that could have drugs deals as an adjunct, might well come before such a court. Our view, however, is that the number of cases involved will be limited. We are really considering the sorts of cases dealt with by the Serious Fraud Office. I suspect that the case to which the hon. Gentleman refers was not prosecuted by the SFO [Interruption.] He indicates that it was not. By and large, the sorts of cases dealt with by the SFO are those that we are considering. Some cases prosecuted by the RCPO might also fall within that category. A fairly limited range of cases are involved.
	The Bill also contains a provision, which was requested by the Opposition, for a High Court judge both to hear the application for a non-jury trial and to conduct such trials. I therefore hope that the Opposition now feel able to support the Bill.
	In conclusion[Hon. Members: Hear, hear.] Perhaps these provisions have been more fun for me than for others to deal with. Section 43 is not a general assault on trial by juryfar from it. The number of cases that can be tried by High Court judges will be few compared with the more than 28,000 contested trials each year. Substantial safeguards have been put in place to ensure that the interests of the defendant are protected, but also to safeguard the public interest in seeing justice done.
	The Bill does not introduce a new policy but rather takes steps to give effect to a statutory provision passed by Parliament in 2003, which was likely to be frustrated by the Opposition in another place. Our aim is to ensure that the full criminality of the most serious cases can be exposed to public view in a criminal trial, and that those convicted can be punished for the totality of their criminality. In some long trials, that is not currently happening. The Bill will be a valuable reform aimed at fulfilling the Government's commitment to tackle fraud, and at creating a criminal justice system that deals effectively and fairly with all kinds of crime.

Dominic Grieve: I suppose that one thing I can say to greet the Bill is that I am at least pleased that the Solicitor-General and Attorney-General have lived up to their promise to introduce a stand-alone Bill for this proposal. Marginal though it may be, the decision that such trials and the mechanism to determine whether they should take place should be dealt with by High Court judges is a tiny improvement. Beyond that, I can welcome nothing in the Bill in any shape or form.

Douglas Hogg: In welcoming the fact that we have a stand-alone Bill, is not the problem that we are enabling the Government to put the proposals into force? The affirmative resolution will never pass in the other place, and the Solicitor-General is thinking of using the Parliament Act to get the Bill through.

Dominic Grieve: I have no doubt that my right hon. and learned Friend is right. The history of the Bill is littered with examples of broken promises. The one promise that has been kept was made during the passage of the Fraud Bill, which was to the effect that there would be no attempt to include the provision in the Fraud Bill, and that a stand-alone Bill would be introduced. The Law Officers have observed that promise. The Bill has a long history, albeit not quite the history given by the Solicitor-General.

Christopher Chope: My hon. Friend says that having a stand-alone Bill is an advantage. Does he agree that one advantage of stand-alone legislation is that it can easily be repealed? Will he say now from the Front Bench that an incoming Conservative Government will do so?

Dominic Grieve: I cannot think of a reason why we should not. Indeed, if anyone asks for my view, I shall say that we should. I hope that gives some indication of my thinking on the matter. It is true that stand-alone legislation can be removed from the statute book fairly easily.
	The Solicitor-General comes to the Dispatch Box with all sorts of honeyed assurances that we should not consider the Bill to be part of a general attack on the jury system. The history of the past 10 years suggests, however, that the system has come under repeated attack from the Government, that on numerous occasions we have had to stand up to the Government's attacknot always with complete successand that there has been a progressive erosion that goes beyond that of the jury system.
	The Solicitor-General mentioned district judges in magistrates courts. I am a firm believer in district judges in magistrates courtsa deputy district judge who sits in magistrates courts is sitting behind me nowbut there is no doubt that, over the past 10 years, the Government have shown themselves to be highly inimical to the lay magistracy. Indeed, they wanted to reduce its work to nothing more than road traffic cases, until the cost was revealed.
	In summary jurisdiction courts, lay magistrates perform exactly the same role of representing the community independently as juries, and the Government do not like juries. If they did, it would be inexplicable that in the Bill that became the Criminal Justice Act 2003 they proposeduntil we stopped themto allow people to elect for trial by judge alone if they were so minded. We had to oppose that proposal, and it was in the final stand-off that we ended up with a double-lock mechanism in section 43. I must tell the Solicitor-General that I had no doubtand I am sure the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) had no doubtthat that was a face-saving device, because we had told the Government in the clearest and most unequivocal terms that in no circumstances, either here or in the other place, would any of the Opposition parties vote to allow the implementation of the proposal. To suggest otherwise is a rewriting of history that causes me even more anxiety when I consider it.
	The right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) mentioned consultation. The Government promised consultation after the 2003 Act: it took the form of a morning seminar, with none of those invited realising that it was the only formal consultation. I could not attend, but my noble Friend Lord Kingsland went along, and was not aware even while attending the seminar that it was in fact the formal consultation. I think the Solicitor-General would have to confirm that there has been no further formal consultation whatever since thencertainly I am not aware of any.
	I acknowledge, and place on record, that on a number of occasions I have met the Attorney-General, and indeed the Solicitor-General, for amiable discussions about possible ways of changing the current jury system in fraud trials. However, none of the suggestions made by me or by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey was accepted, and it was clear that there was no meeting of minds.
	We should ask ourselves what the Bill is really trying to do. I always listen carefully to the Solicitor-General, but I have to say that the first thing I look at when the Government propose legislation is the Home Office propaganda statement released to the press, in which the form of words and the nuances are often rather different.
	This Home Office statement begins with a little preamble about the new legislation. It states
	The Government is committed to rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of ... the law-abiding majority.
	How often have we heard that statement used in the House to justify authoritarian, draconian, unfair measures to interfere with the criminal justice system, without there being a shred of evidence that they will rebalance the system in favour of the law-abiding majority?
	Apart from anything else, I think the Solicitor-General must accept that if he is telling us the truth, the impact of his proposals on criminality in the United Kingdom will be so minimal as to go totally unnoticed. I believe that 99.9 per cent. of trials will still take place before juries, with possibly half a dozen a year taking place without them. If this is really the Government's answer to how we are to reduce crime and the fear of crime in our country, they are going about it in a very strange way.

Stephen Hesford: rose

Dominic Grieve: I will give way if the hon. Gentleman's intervention relates to that point.

Stephen Hesford: It relates to the point about reducing the fear of crime. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that if the Government get their way today and the Bill comes into force in two or three months' time, it will make defendants in cases of this kind more likely to think of pleading guilty, rather than trying to use the system to get off when they know they will be able to spin out the process for a year or so?

Dominic Grieve: I think it most unlikely that it will make any difference at all. One of the Solicitor-General's arguments for the Bill was that some cases collapsed after long periods without ever reaching a conclusion. That is absolutely true, but jurors have not had a role in it. In my experienceand I have some experience of fraud trialssuch cases usually collapse because the prosecution case was poorly presented, failed to identify the key issues and presented far too much evidence. Cases are thrown out at half time on submissions of no case to answer, without a jury ever considering a verdict. Unless by some extraordinary circumstance judges take a different view from the view that they would otherwise have taken at half time because they are sitting without a juryand I hope that that is not the case, because they ought to be applying their minds in exactly the same fashionI think the number of long fraud trials that collapse will be identical.
	There are new protocols, which we have discussed, there are directions from the Lord Chief Justice, and there is a new Fraud Act, the Fraud Act 2006. All those developments might well help. I hope very much that fewer fraud trials will collapse at half time, because I hope that cases will be dealt with better. I hope that the charges on the indictment will be right, and that fewer prosecutions will be brought in cases in which manifestly the wrong charge has been brought or no charge should have been brought at all; but I do not think that juries are the key to such improvements.

Stephen Hesford: rose

Dominic Grieve: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman again, but after that I want to make some progress.

Stephen Hesford: The Billlike section 43 of the 2003 Act, which we have already passedis all about case management. The hon. Gentleman made that point when my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said that a High Court judge would do some reading in advance of cases. This is a pre-trial review process, a concept with which the hon. Gentleman will be very familiar. Does he not accept that if a High Court judge gets a grip on one of these cases at an early stage, case management is likely to improve? Once seized of the position, the judge will almost certainly want to ensure that cases do not collapse in the way that the hon. Gentleman has described.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point, but the same applies to jury trials. Judges ought to read themselves into the evidence before a case starts, and in my experience of long and complex fraud trialsindeed, all long and complex trialsthat is what they do. A much more complicated issue, which we have not resolved, arises when the material that the judge reads himself into at the outset turns out to be different from the material that is ultimately presented in the course of a trial. We have heard nothing from the Solicitor-General about that procedural issue and the real risk of miscarriages of justice. I shall say more about that shortly.
	Yes, there should be good case management, and I am sure that case management can be improved. Stephen Wooler's report on the collapse of the Jubilee line case shows exactly what can go wrong with trials, and it has nothing whatever to do with juries.

Jonathan Djanogly: Cases may take five or even 10 years to come to court, and that often has nothing to do with juries. When such cases go before a jury, they are frequently thrown out after 10 years' gestation.

Dominic Grieve: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Delay in any criminal justice process is a bad thing, and I knownot so much from working on fraud cases, but from working on health and safety cases, including prosecuting themthat cases take far too long to get to court. One would like them to go faster.
	Delay is sometimes due to the investigation process. I do not think that it is usually due to the lawyers, but bringing everybody together in a court requires a bit of organisation, and it will still require organisation even when there is not a jury. There are always plenty of people to make up the jury panelthey can be found without great difficultyand co-ordinating the diary availability of lawyers, defendants, witnesses and judges is by far the more complicated and time-consuming process in bringing a case to court. That is where the delays arise.
	The Home Office propaganda statement goes on to say:
	At present, in some of the most serious and complicated fraud cases, it is not possible for defendants to be tried on charges that adequately reflect the full scale of the accusations against them. This is because in cases that involve a multitude of different offences and defendants, it is necessary to limit the amount of evidence that is put before a jury.
	When I started prosecuting, I was taught by those who knew much more about the subject than I did to keep it simple. Every judge in front of whom I ever appeared insisted, when prosecutors said they wanted an 18-count indictmentfor fraud or anything elseNo, cut it down. The criminality can be adequately shown by far fewer counts. In my experience, at the end of cases that resulted in a conviction, other matters could often be taken into consideration with the consent of the defendant. Under the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, where defendants do not agree to matters being taken into consideration, the judge may reach a decision on his own. I am at a loss, therefore, to understand how the Solicitor-General can argue that there is a problem of not showing full criminality, as we have all these important new provisions on the statute bookalthough I have a funny feeling that the relevant section of the 2004 Act has not yet been implemented, which is characteristic of this Government.
	We must also have a sense of perspective. I am sure that there are many people who have committed all sorts of crimesnot just fraudfor which they have never been convicted. I am not particularly concerned about that if they are serving a long period of imprisonment for the crimes for which they have been convicted, and neither I suspect are the public. The truth is that in many cases people are convicted of specimen counts, and it is perfectly adequate for the sentencing that follows to reflect the overall criminality. The Solicitor-General simply did not touch on that in his remarks, which puzzled me very much.

Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. He and I have debated a number of such Bills over the yearsto some effect, if I may say sobut his last point does not do him justice. Is he really suggesting that in a multi-billion pound fraud case there will be a specimen count and the judge will introduce what we used to refer to as TICsoffences taken into considerationand the defendant will say, I am going to have a series of other multi-billion frauds taken into account?

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman had better ask the Solicitor-General and the Government about that. It was not an uncontroversial proposal when it was put forward under the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill. We debated it extensively in Committee. Some argued that it might be unfair to defendants. I took the view that, in a fraud involving a repetitive system, there was very little harm in the judge making such a ruling at the end of the trial if the defendant did not accept the further offences. There is a greyer area: there might be different methods of fraud, in which case I would expect each method to be reflected by specimen countswhich seem to commend themselves so little to the Solicitor-General. Therefore, I have to say to the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) that the Government have put in place a mechanism for getting round this problem and still having a jury trial. We simply have not heard from the Solicitor-General why it has suddenly been decided that this method is unworkable, or does not even merit proper commentary on Second Reading.
	The next thing that the Government say in the Home Office document is:
	In spite of attempts to keep trials within reasonable grounds, complex and serious cases can often drag on for months, which imposes an intolerable burden on jurors. It also means that juries are not properly representative as not many people can afford to give up their normal lives for so long.
	The Solicitor-General has tried to argue that there is something special about long and complex fraud trials, but there patently is not. I worked on a complex health and safety trial lasting many months, in which the jury had to consider technical, engineering material about a pontoon in Ramsgate harbour. Working models of the pontoon were brought into court so that jurors could look at them. I have been involved in other cases that required the same technical expertise, with experts coming to court to explain things to juries. Dozens of lever-arch files, often massive ones, had to be placed in the jury box. Such cases will not be covered by these proposals

Humfrey Malins: Yet.

Dominic Grieve: Yet, as my hon. Friend says. From my personal experience, it is crystal clear that juries can be made to understand such material as long as matters are explained in layman's language, and most advocates should be, and are, capable of doing that. Help from the judge in summing up will also facilitate that. Therefore, I simply do not understand why we have suddenly identified this extraordinary category of evidence that is so complex that juries cannot deal with it.
	I am very pleased that yesterday I was able to secure the report on interviews with jurors in the Jubilee line case. That document has not previously been published, and if the Government had anything to do with not publishing it I can well understand why. That document was the basis of Mr. Wooler's report

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but it is helpful to those seeking to record and report our events if he directs his remarks to the microphone and not to the Back Benches.

Dominic Grieve: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The document I am referring to was prepared to inform that report. It makes for fascinating reading because for the first time the jurors who served on the Jubilee line fraud trial were interviewed, and their impressions of the way the case progressed were recorded, as were their attitudes to their jury service, which lasted many months. In truth, it also gave an impression of whether they were competent to deal with the casewhich involved 46 files of documentation of a financial and other nature being placed in front of them.
	The conclusion was that the jury appeared to be remarkably co-operative, mutually supportive and cohesive. Jurors said that they all took their task seriously, and most took it very seriously, and they made positive remarks about the process. The majority of the jurors said that they remained very involved in their task as jurors and insisted that they were on top of the evidence and had a good understanding of the case when it collapsed. They knew that there was more evidence to come in the judge's summing-up and directions.
	The jury had a group meeting, and the jury taken as a whole did not appear to have had difficulty in understanding the evidence or the essentials of the case as presented to it. It is stated that from the claims made by the jurors, which were broadly supported by the understanding that they displayed at the group interview in the afternoon discussion, that they showed quite impressive familiarity with the charges, issue and evidence despite the length of time that had elapsed since the case collapsed, the fact that they did not have their notes or access to documents nor an opportunity to think back and refresh their memories, and the fact that they had not heard all the evidence, arguments and summing up. They recalled particular parts of the evidence and particular witnesses and the substance of their evidence.  [Interruption.] I see the Solicitor-General nodding. If ever one wanted a document that provided a better monument to the endeavours of juries in this country, or a better justification for the jury system, it would be hard to find.

Douglas Hogg: Before my hon. Friend leaves this issue, will he remind the House that that jury accepted empanelment on the trial even though they knew that the trial was going to last between six and 12 months? It took much longer, but they were willing to serve up to 12 months, which makes the point about jurors' willingness to serve in long cases.

Dominic Grieve: Yes indeed, and it is worth bearing it in mind that, under the Lord Chief Justice's protocol, trials should now last more than six months only in the most exceptional circumstances, and that the reality is that jury service is normally 14 days. Any period of jury service that exceeds 14 days therefore inevitably leads to some jurors being exempt. So when the Solicitor-General starts giving us the extraordinary argument that was repeated in the propaganda
	It also means that juries are not properly representative as not many people can afford to give up their normal lives for so long.
	I start to get seriously worried, because that argument could be used in respect of any jury panel that lasts more than 14 days.
	Indeed, as the Solicitor-General knows, that argument could also be used against the jury system altogether, because there are some peopleMembers of Parliament, for examplewho are quite likely to be summoned to jury service and then released pretty quickly because of their other commitments, even after the changes that we introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. For those reasons, that argument was one of the weakest put forward by the Solicitor-General. I believe that juries can understand and deal with the evidence, that there are plenty of people in the total electorate who are capable of making up a jury panel to serve for 12 or 18 months, and that they do so willingly and cheerfully. If Members read the report to which I referred, they will see how interested the jurors were in that case. Indeed, the comments and feedback were that they took their job seriously and found it rewarding.

Mike O'Brien: I, too, have read that report, from which the hon. Gentleman has quoted selectively. He puts up the straw man that we are saying that juries cannot understand such cases, but we have said clearly that we believe that they do understand many such cases because they spend a long time listening to them. However, what he fails to disclose from that report is the evidence of the substantial burden placed on individuals in terms of their relationship with their employer. Some have had to take substantial time off work, and some have had long-term damage done to their relationship with their employers as a result of serving on a jury for so long. Our argument is not about understanding; it is about the burden on jurors, and I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman does not care about that.
	While I am on my feet, let me make one point about the selection of juries and whether or not they are representative. The argument is not so much about representativeness as randomness. Jurors are selected randomly, and because of the way in which long cases evolve, that randomness is eroded because certain people cannot stay on juries. The randomness of selection is undermined by these long cases.

Dominic Grieve: Let me make the position clear. On selective quotation, the Solicitor-General has had one advantage over me: he had the reportand doubtless read itmonths ago, whereas it was put into the public domain only very recently. However, he is absolutely right to say that the burden of serving on a jury was considerable for jurors, and some pointed out that it affected their careers. But on reading the report, it is also clear that what really upset them was not the disruption to their lives but the fact that such disruption was for nothingthat, at the end of the day, there were unable to return a verdict.
	The Solicitor-General might like to point out to the Prime Minister and to present and past Home Secretaries that the other thing that really upset the jurors in that trial was their portrayal in the media. The jurors felt unfairly portrayed as the cause of the collapse of the trial. They particularly objected to the portrayal of them in the press as being unable to understand evidence or to remember evidence and reach a fair verdict. Some were not particularly concerned but others were very upset. One said, I was just so angry. To blame us when it was not managed properlyit was a farce.' It was Ministers who encouraged the press into that condemnation. They latched on to the collapse of that trial in order to raise general arguments against jury trial in its totality.

David Burrowes: I do not want to dwell too much on the Jubilee line case, but are not the comments of Her Majesty's chief inspector, in recognising the burden that the substantial length of some trials can impose on juries, pertinent? He said in a recommendation that
	There is a need in such cases for more structured support for jurors to enable them to plan more effectively and minimise disruption to their personal and family lives and to provide authoritative assistance in resolving difficulties directly attributable to the length of jury service.
	There was no call, however, to remove trial by jury entirely.

Dominic Grieve: Yes, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes another very important point. Juries should not be treated like sheep, shepherded back and forth from the jury room into the jury box. I have seen enough examples in my time of juries not being well treated, usually by the judiciary, which is regrettable. The truth is that juries are partners in this process, and my experience is that if they are treated like grown-ups, they respond very well to the responsibility placed on them.
	Of course, one reason why jury trial is so beneficial is precisely that juries are independent. At the risk of repeating issues of principlethey seem, however, to need repetition in this Housecriminal trials of a serious nature go to juries precisely because they are the community. When they do not consider themselves capable of returning a guilty verdict, we should remember that they are, after all, not the state in some abstract term, but the ones who might be affected by future criminality. So there can be no better test of guilt or innocence than placing that question in the hands of those within the community who might be the victims of such criminality. However, the route that the Solicitor-General is going down plainly raises the question of the development of the state against the individual.

Humfrey Malins: The Solicitor-General seems to be arguing that the issue is huge time burdens on the jury and other pressures on their lives. Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is merit in that argument, the Solicitor-General should have introduced a different Bill stating that all trials of, say, more than three months will be by judge alone? The truth is that the same burdens that the Solicitor-General referred to in support of his argument exist already in respect of many other cases that have nothing to do with fraud.

Dominic Grieve: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and such a Bill would at least have some intellectual logic. Of course, the difficulty for the Governmentindeed, this is what worries me so muchis that the current terrorist trials, which are lasting many months, would then no longer be suitable material for juries. I feel very strongly that such trials must take place in front of juries. I am never quite sure what the Government really think about such matters, because of the Prime Minister's siren songs about his dislike of our archaic criminal justice system, which is always in need of modernisation. I do of course accept that curbing the right to trial by jury in such cases would, at present, be a step too far for the Government in terms of public opinion. That is why they have picked on fraud trials as the first area in which to make their inroads.

Paul Farrelly: The hon. Gentleman is making some very reasonable points about case managementnot for nothing does  Private Eye call the prosecutor the serious farce officebut he is wrong to imply that the Government have picked this Bill out of a hat. As has been said before, it is based on the Roskill recommendations, which are 20 years old. I hope that it will be part of a package of measuresincluding a serious attempt to address plea-bargainingthat the Government will roll out in the next few months. I should be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's arguments on plea-bargaining. At the moment, there is very little incentive for serious fraudsters or insider dealers to cop a plea bargain, because they think that they will be able to bamboozle the jury and get off. If the Bill gives some incentive for such people to cop a plea bargain, because of the prospect of appearing before an expert judge, all the better for the more serious and effective prosecution of fraud and insider dealing.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman's words trouble me somewhat, and I shall explain why. First, there was the implication that trial by judge alone would lead to more convictions because people would use the jury system somehow to slip out of the net. I am not persuaded by that argument. In most of the trials, the only issue that has to be determined is dishonesty. In the Maxwell case, there were many victims and the criminality alleged was considerable, butas I understand the jury's verdictit was not persuaded about the dishonesty of some of the key defendants. That is a matter uniquely for juries. If the jury thought that, a judge might well have to come to the same conclusion.
	If we are to allow trials to take place in front of judges on their own, we will have to consider carefully the procedures we adopt to ensure that a fair trial can take place. On that point, the Solicitor-General told us nothing.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Juries convict in 85 per cent. of fraud cases and anybody who thinks that they will get an easier ride in front of a jury has no experience of the system, either hands on or hands off. The Maxwell case caused an enormous furore, but the problem was that the main character was not there because he had walked off the back of a boat. That is why the defendants were acquitted, and they would probably have also been acquitted by a judge. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if a judge had acquitted them, the outcry in the tabloid press that would have followed a white collar judge acquitting white collar people would have been appalling? That is one of the main reasons why the jury system is so valuable.

Dominic Grieve: I agree entirely with the hon. and learned Gentleman and that brings me to my point about procedure. We will be asking judges to deal with long and complex cases and make decisions at the end based not on the balance of probabilitiesthe civil testbut on whether they are sure that a person is guilty of an offence. That raises problems with which judges should not be saddled. Indeed, I was surprised when the Solicitor-General suggested that the judiciary favoured this change. I have not come across a single judge, especially among the Crown Court judges, who thinks that it is necessary. Indeed, many have said privately, in vociferous terms, that they are against it. The last thing that High Court judges want is to have their credibility damaged when they reach difficult conclusions of fact. If they say that they are sure that certain events happened, three years later a new witness might emergewhich sometimes happenswho calls their judgment about what went on into question. It does not help the reputation of the judiciary who, in the criminal justice division, are the arbiters of fairness, not the deciders of fact. I know that we cast judges in that role in Diplock courts, but that was for exceptional reasons, and it is not in their interests to extend the practice.

Mike O'Brien: I wish to query the statistic about conviction rates given by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). The argument is not about more convictions, but it is important to be accurate. The Serious Fraud Office completed 10 trials involving 23 defendants last year, of whom 13 were convicted and 10 acquitted, producing a conviction rate of 57 per cent. The average conviction rate over the past five years has been 61 per cent.
	If I may, I will also address the question of dishonesty. The highly regarded report by Mr. Justice Auld dealt with the issue of dishonesty and juries, and it said:
	Often there is no need for any value judgment as to the dishonesty of the defendant, for example, where the only issue is whether he is factually responsible for, or a party to, whatever conduct is alleged, and where analysis of the evidence one way or another effectively determines the issue of dishonesty. In cases of complexity, for example, cases where the issue turns on medical or other scientific evidence, the issue is not one of dishonesty at all, or even of assessment of the reliability or credibility of witnesses or the defendant. It is simply one that requires a jury to understand and to evaluate conflicting expert views.
	Mr. Justice Auld deals with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes more effectively than I could.

Dominic Grieve: I am not sure whether that was left out of the Solicitor-General's speech or was to form part of the concluding remarks, but I disagree with it. Juries are capable of understanding complex evidence. Because of the random nature of their selection they mutually reinforce, and even out disparities of education. In my experience, the evidence is overwhelming that they can return true verdicts according to the evidence and ensure fairness towards those who are accused, quite apart from taking into account the wider need to suppress crime in our society.
	We have not heard about the procedure. Judges who are trying these cases will be judges of both law and fact. They will have material placed before them for their consideration that they may subsequently have to rule out of the evidence. They will receive representations and submissions in the course of the trial that jurors would not normally hear, and they will have to handle all those complexities in the course of the trial process. That is not a slight issue, and I am a little puzzled that the Solicitor-General has not provided us with greater detail about how the system would work in practice. I suspect that it will be time- consuming and, indeed, he has already conceded that time saving is not part of the picture. If that is the case, it brings me back to the Government's propaganda document, which states:
	At times these trials collapse, wasting millions of pounds and failing to ensure justice for victims.
	I repeat, what has that got to do with juries?
	I always listen carefully to the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, but there is a big difference between what the Law Officers say and what the Government's Home Office propaganda department churns out for the benefit of the press. That is why the House should be so wary of these proposals. I do not know where the force behind them comes from, but the evidence has been overwhelming in the past 10 years that this Government do not like juries or our present criminal justice system; believe in forms of parallel administrative justice; and are ready to cut corners with our civil liberties and the rights of defendants in order to achieve what they believe to be socially desirable objectives. The risk that the House runs is that supporting this measure will not reduce crimewhich we should prioritisebut will undermine the criminal justice system and confidence in it. We would also open the door to getting rid of the jury system that, I and many other hon. Members profoundly believe, is one of the absolute underpinnings of our civil liberties. On that basis, there is no possibility of our supporting the measure and we will vote against it.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I shall endeavour to be brief. The last time that I said that at the beginning of a speech, they were the only words that I uttered before being stopped. I shall take a little longer on this occasion, although this awful Bill deserves short shrift.
	The Bill is a serious attack on civil liberties, that have been our heritage for 800 years. It is unnecessary, unworkable and ill-conceived. If it is ever passed into law, it will almost certainly offend the European convention. It will lead to a two-tier system of white- collar judges trying white-collar criminals. It will involve huge delay in the trying of cases and massive extra expenditure, and it risks bringing the judicial system into disrepute. Apart from that, it is fine.

Richard Shepherd: I am not sure why the hon. and learned Gentleman says that the Bill will almost certainly fail before the European convention. Which other competencies in Europe have jury trial?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: If the hon. Gentleman waits a moment, I shall deal with that as I develop my argument.
	I shall start with a generality. The Bill does not stand on its own. From their inception in 1997, the Government have shown a clear aversion to the principle of jury trial. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 made it possible to bring past offences into any court to judge a defendant's mala fides or mens rea. We can do it in this casethis Government have serious form when it comes to attacking jury trial.
	As has been noted, those attacks began way back with the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill. That was introduced in 1999, barely two years after the Government came to power. Effectively, it was an attempt to abolish the right to elect trial by jury, and there lies a bitter irony. The Home Secretary of the time, now the Leader of the House, told us that we had no need to fear as the provision would be applied only to minor, either-way offences. Serious fraud or crimes of violence would be left untouched, he said, but now the dog is being attacked from another end.
	No doubt the Solicitor-General believes that he is speaking the truth when he states that the Government are not bent on the destruction of the jury trial system, but his assertions give us little confidence. Indeed, I can remember the then Home Secretary telling the House that the mode of trial Bill enjoyed the support of the Lord Chief Justice. In fact, it emphatically did not enjoy his support: subsequently, I discovered that the Lord Chief Justice had written to the Home Secretary four days before that statement was made to the House to say that he had grave reservations about the Bill and that he thought that it would lead to considerable injustice.
	That causes one to have less than entire confidence in a Government who say that the judiciary are in favour of the Bill. I can tell the House that judges are profoundly against it. They have said repeatedly in privatealthough many have also spoken in public that they consider the Bill to be unnecessary and unworkable.

Douglas Hogg: If one needs public evidence of that one need only look at the remarks made in the other place by former Law Lords.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I simply concur with that and, as they say in the Court of Appeal, have nothing to add.
	This Bill is part of the syndrome of legislative hyperactive disorder in respect of crime and punishment that has gripped the Government ever since they came to power. The House may be interested in the statistics. In the whole of the 19th century, this House passed 34 Bills involving crime and punishment. In the first half of the 20th century, it passed 11. Since 1950, the House has passed 67 such Bills, 27 of them in the past 10 years.
	That volume of legislation is not the result of our people becoming more wicked, venal or in need of correction than they were in earlier times. It stems from the fact that such legislation is perceived as a popularor populistmechanism for enlisting electoral support. The mechanism is always the same: the Government create a morbid and often false fear of crime, then purport to do something about it by removing one civil liberty or another.

Edward Garnier: I could not agree more with the hon. and learned Gentleman. Does he agree that the Government's cynicism is made worse by the amount of legislation that they pass but then fail to implement? In large part, the 2003 Act has already been repealed, much of it before it was implemented. Other parts of that Act have been implemented and repealed, and still others have yet to be implemented at all. Are not the Government guilty of legislation by headline?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: There is much in what the hon. and learned Gentleman says. The Government's approach has caused serious problems in the courts, given the uncertainty about which parts of the body of legislation are in force, when they came into force and how much is retrospective. However, I do not want to stray too far from the locus in quo, so I shall return to dealing with the indictment with which I began what is going to be a relatively short speech.
	The Solicitor-General was quite right to correct me over a slip of the tongue that I made about the statistical basis of jury trials. Juries do not convict in 85 per cent. of cases but, under the jury system, 85 per cent. of serious fraud cases do result in conviction. That conviction rate is higher than for any other criminal activity. I can give chapter and verse for that statement, but we should not get involved in a barren argument about statistics. The plain fact is that juries understand serious fraud very well.
	I should declare an interest, in that I have done many serious fraud cases in my time at the Bar. No one in my position has ever had the slightest doubt that juries understand such cases. The financial dealings are sometimes complex, but there is almost never any doubt about whether a fraud has been committed, only about who did it. Juries are far and away better than anyone else at deciding that relatively simple matter at the end of a trial.
	Do we have a problem recruiting juries? No, we do not. The panel of jurors is rather larger at the beginning, and the people who are selected are the ones who are comfortable with sitting for between, say, 12 to 26 weeks to deal with a case. Are they unrepresentative? No, they are not. It is true that we lose a number of people whose jobs preclude them from working on a jury over such a period if time. As a result, some classes of peopledisabled people, women, those who have taken early retirement or are temporarily unemployed, for exampleare slightly over-represented, but are this, of all Governments, going to suggest that such jurors are incapable of trying serious fraud cases or that their involvement is undesirable? The proportion of cases in which juries convict demonstrates that they are perfectly capable of coming to a decision.
	In passing, I want to mention the Jubilee line case, which was cursed from the start by poor case management. Matters that should have been dealt with before a jury was ever empanelled were dealt with only afterwards. As a result, the trial became completely unmanageable and in the end collapsed. Reference has been made to the subsequent inquiry, and the resulting document is a luminous illustration of the seriousness and brilliance with which juries attach themselves to their work.
	The jury in the Jubilee line case had nothing to do with the trial's collapse. Indeed, it could well be said that it was an early example of trial by judge alone. The jury had hardly anything to do with it: the case was tried by the judge alone, and the result was a complete disaster. Our adversarial system is wholly incapable of dealing with trial by judge alone. To suggest, as the previous Home Secretary once did, that removing the jury creates an inquisitorial system is the precise equivalent of removing the wheels from a car and claiming that one has invented a boat. The system is incapable of dealing with a judge being the arbiter of fact.
	I hope that the Solicitor-General will accept the line that I am about to toss to him and intervene to assist me. I want to ask a question about public interest immunity that I could not put to him while he was making his speech, as I did not want to delay progress in the debate. In the vast majority of serious cases there are important issues of public interest immunity, which our system deals with by means of the prosecution talking to the judge and deciding what evidence should be given to the defence, and what should not. The judge can make that decision becauseand this has been confirmed by Europehe is not the judge of fact. However, a judge who determines PII applications and is then a judge of fact will be in possession of material that he will share with the prosecution, but of which the defence will have no knowledge at all. In those circumstances a conviction would last for about 10 minutes in a European Court before it was overturned

Mike O'Brien: rose

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I pause so that the Solicitor-General can answer that interesting question, which perplexes the whole legal system.

Mike O'Brien: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend. I have three points to make to him. First, the Serious Fraud Office does not regard the use of PII certificates as a regular occurrence in such cases, but my hon. and learned Friend is rightit might happen on occasion, so it might be an issue sometimes. Secondly, in Northern Ireland, judges sit alone in the Diplock courts and regularly have to deal with PII and other issues. A second judge is involved; they deal with the issues adequately and there is no problem. Thirdly, my hon. and learned Friend is well aware that in most European countries juries do not deal with such cases. Single judges deal with them and they do not seem to have problems with the European Court of Human Rights, so I think that his point is a bad one.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I was hoping to have an answer, but unhappily I did not; or rather, it was an attempt at an answer but, as the Solicitor-General knows, it was entirely deficient. I shall take it piece by piece. PII happens in almost every serious fraud case that is triedcertainly in my experienceso that is the end of that argument.
	The second argument is that a single judge can hear PII applications, but the European Court has already said that the only reason why it endorses PII applications made to a single judge is because he is not the judge of fact. The minute he is a judge of fact, such applications will, ipso facto, offend before the European Court. For a secondary judge to sit alongside another judge dealing with PII applications would be reinventing the wheel, with one judge sitting as jury and the other as a judge. Furthermore, it is necessary that PII cases are kept permanently under review by the judge trying the case.
	Finally, I do not want to give the Solicitor-General a long lecture on the inquisitorial system, the Napoleonic and other codes and how they differ from an adversarial system, because we would be here for a considerable time. However, the checks and safeguards in an inquisitorial system are wholly absent from our adversarial system, which relies on a jury to provide them.

Mike O'Brien: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for giving way again. I pointed out that such issues have to be addressed in the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland, where they are dealt with adequately. A great train of cases has not been taken to Strasbourg for resolution; they have been dealt with adequately. My hon. and learned Friend argues that the issues need to be resolved sensibly, but my view is that they can be, and have been, resolved.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: But with great respect, not in the example of the Diplock courtsan aberrant system of justice, which came about because of a terrorist threat that does not exist. If attacks on jury trial are to be regularly defended on the basis of courts in Ireland set up by Lord Diplock in answer to a terrorist threat, the Government are making a threadbare argument.

Douglas Hogg: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the problems he has been exploring relate to previous convictions and hearsay evidence, too? Since the 2003 Act, they have been used with much greater frequency. The judge has to rule as to the admissibility of previous convictions. At present, if he rules in favour of the defendant the information never goes before the jury, but in the circumstances contemplated by the Bill, he would have to put previous convictions out of his mind, which would not be very reassuring for the defendant.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I agree entirely. I have one more point to make about our judiciary.
	One of the reasons why our judiciary is rightly regarded throughout the world as an exemplar and completely incorruptible is the existence of the jury system. There is no point whatever in anyone attempting to bribe or bully a criminal judge because between the judge and the individual stands the jury system, which has stood us in good stead for 800 years. I regularly visit Mother Russia to lecture on judicial independence, something which the Russians regard as we do the yeti or the abominable snowman: people have seen itthey believe that it existsbut nobody believes that it can be brought into being. I spend much time explaining that implicit in the concept of the independence and incorruptibility of judges is the jury system; it maintains judges' fierce independence of Government or anyone else. To start attacking that system is to start attacking not fraud or fraudsters, but 800 years of British liberty.

Stephen Hesford: What about the 150 years of civil justice before a single judge? How does that run parallel, or at all sensibly, with what my hon. and learned Friend has just said?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I am sorry, but I do not entirely understand that intervention. Is the argument that we are dealing with the Judicature Actsthat in civil cases judges sit alone? If it is seriously argued in respect of the liberty of the subject that in criminal cases involving imprisonment and the removal of liberty we can move to a civil judicial system [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	If the argument suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) is really being advanced as the exemplar for a criminal justice system, I have to say that it is threadbare.

Mike O'Brien: My hon. and learned Friend is being generous in giving way to me again. He seems to be arguing that judges would be corrupted by the proposed process, but my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) rightly pointed out that judges in our civil courts are dealing on a day-to-day basis with cases that involve vast amounts of money over which two parties are arguing. Our judges have not been corrupted by having to make decisions in such cases. The idea that as a result of the Bill our judges would suddenly become corruptible is facetious. My hon. and learned Friend cannot seriously be putting forward that argument. As he rightly says, our judges are known to be incorruptible; the Bill or any further legislation notwithstanding, our judges will continue to have that reputation.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: With great respect, I have to point out that the Solicitor-General does not listen to what I say, if he suggests that I am saying that as the result of the Bill, we would have corrupt judges. I said that one of the reasons why criminal judges rightly, and uniquely, maintain a reputation for being incorruptible is the existence of the jury system. It has always been implicit in our law and legal learning that one of the advantages of a jury system is that it acts as a buffer between the citizen and the judge. That is one of the reasons why it has been possible to maintain over centuriesnot weeks or months but centuriesa reputation for a rigorously and ruthlessly incorruptible judiciary. I hope that the Solicitor-General now understands the point I was making. It is not a new point; it has been made for centuries and is one of the reasons for the existence of jury trial.
	May I now deal with the erosion argument? The Solicitor-General has given me little confidence that the measure is not part of a general erosion. One of the reasons for thatto pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve)is the repetition of the idea that nothing implicit in fraud or juries makes the Bill necessary. What makes it necessary, we have been told time and again, is the length of time that a trial will take. And as the hon. Gentleman points out, it is not simply fraud cases that take longer than the two weeks of jury trial. I suppose, but I do not have statistical evidence for it, that the average length of a murder case in the Old Bailey is six weeks. That is not because it is complex; it is because often there are several defendants to try. That is one reason why fraud cases take a considerable timenot because they are complex, but because often there are quite a few defendants to try. And if it takes 12 weeks to try six defendants, it is two weeks per defendant. That is why such cases last as long as they do.
	If there is going to be an ex cathedra statement that juries as a matter of fact should not be put to the inconvenience of sitting for more than six weeks on any trial, we are into the borderland and the hinterland of very many other cases in addition to fraud cases. If that is what is motivating the Governmentand it is what the Solicitor-General says is motivating the Governmentwe are not simply on a slippery slope, we are on a glacial path towards the Government bringing forward legislation in respect of terrorism, in respect of long murder trials, and in respect of all trials anticipated to last for more than six weeks, all to be tried for three weeks by judge alone, with all the difficulties and problems that are implicit in that.

Diane Abbott: Does my hon. and learned Friend accept that there are those of us who lack the legal expertise of some people in the Chamber, but who have a concern about the Bill precisely because of the precedent that it may set? It is being argued that there is something unique about fraud, but as he has pointed out, the only unique thing that Ministers can point to is the length of the trial. I am worried that if the House concedes the Bill, we shall see Ministers coming back with further legislation, and large numbers of people who might never expect to be up on a charge of fraud may find themselves caught in the trammels of a system without the surety of a jury trial.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She puts the point very well. It is a fear that many have, and that fear is entirely justified on the basis of what we have heard as being the reasonor the apologiafor this piece of legislation.

Edward Garnier: Of course, the Solicitor-General said it in terms. He said, We have no intention at this stage. It is not just, We have no intention; it is no intention at this stage, so we need to be very careful about the Government's promises.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: The hon. and learned Gentleman has picked up the minutiae that I missed, and I dare say it will be in  Hansard and I dare say that the Solicitor-General will correct it

Mike O'Brien: rose

Robert Marshall-Andrews: My hon. and learned Friend is going to correct it now.

Mike O'Brien: We have no plans. Will the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) be happy with that?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Well, there we are.

David Winnick: Bearing in mind my earlier intervention on the Solicitor-General, does my hon. and learned Friend accept that while some of us who are critical will vote for Second Readingalthough others, such as himself, will notwe will do so on the clear understanding that we will not in future vote for any measure that would further undermine the jury system? I am sure that the Government have no illusions on that score.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that he has many concerns about civil liberties, and that the Bill is probably stretching his line almost to breaking point. For many of us it has passed breaking point, and that is not simply because it involves the hallowed principle of jury trial, but because, given the Government's record and the way that they are presenting the Bill, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that there is a sticking point on serious fraud.
	We have put in place, since 27 March 2005, a protocol that will undoubtedly shorten serious fraud cases very considerably indeed. It is a matter of great regret that the Government have not seen fit to wait and see what effect that protocol has before introducing this legislation. And I am sorry to say that the fact that they have not waited is yet another reason to believe that something doctrinaire lies behind this, rather than the particularities of the difficulties that are thrown up at present by jury trial.
	I end on this note. We have a system that enjoys not only the confidence of this country, but the confidence and approbation of the entire world. We have, without a shadow of a doubt, the most revered criminal justice system in the world. It is held in far higher esteem, I am sorry to say, than the place in which we sit at the moment, and one of the reasons for that is that we are in the habit, unhappily, in the recent past of passing legislation of this sort.

Simon Hughes: Like the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) and the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), some of us have well and truly been here before. The arguments of both were as robust as those that they made previously, and the same will be true of mine.
	This is the fifth round of this fight. The first and second rounds were fought on the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Bill and the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) (No. 2) Bill in the previous Labour Administration; the third was fought in relation to the Criminal Justice Act 2003; and the fourth was a year ago, when the Government attempted to get into law an order under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
	I note that the issue frequently comes around in November. I also note, with satisfaction, that the Government in the end do not get their way, and I anticipate that it will be the same in relation to this Bill. Even if we do not manage to defeat it today, or on Third Reading in this place after it has come back from Committee, I do not imagine that it will have any better chance of getting through the House of Lords than similar proposals have over the past six years. Not only are the arguments weak, and not only is thisas we have all agreed so far, apart from the Solicitor-Generalan attempt to undermine one of the fundamental and successful pillars of the British justice system, but the arguments in favour of this proposal have weakened further since the Government started down this road in 1979.

Douglas Hogg: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is very important that those in the other place should stand firm, even if threatened with the Parliament Acts? Will he encourage those of his party in the other place to stand firm notwithstanding such a threat?

Simon Hughes: I agree exactly with the first proposition, and I have already started to encourage my friends in the other place. The right hon. and learned Gentleman might be encouraged to hear, in reply to the sort of question that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield was asked some while ago, that we have

Douglas Hogg: That you have the opportunity?

Simon Hughes: Nothat we have started looking at the pieces of legislation that we would wish to be repealed, and if this legislation were enacted we would vote for its repeal in the next Parliament, when we would hope that there would be a majority for its repeal. The Government need to know that they will take the time of Parliament to pass something that will not get through this year, would get through next year only by use of the Parliament Acts, and is then likely to have an extremely short duration, even if the Government are still in office by the time the Parliament Acts could be implemented. I am very clear about that. It is not pique; it is not theology. It is evidence, it is principle, and it is argument on the merits of the case.
	The one merit of the Bill, compared with the other three, is that at least it is what it says on the tin. It says that it is the Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill. The Government are not hiding their light under a bushel; they are saying what they want, and it is on that basis that my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I, together with many other Opposition Membersand, I hope, a considerable number of Labour Memberswill oppose it both today and later.
	I shall try not to make points identical to those that others have made, although there is a huge amount of common ground. I want to make the preliminary point that this is part of an approach towards government that I fundamentally object to. The idea built up over the years and centuries that lay members of the public participate as serious players in the criminal justice systeman idea that is hugely important in the law of England, Wales and Northern Irelandis being undermined. There are three elements in that.
	The first is that this is a repeated serious attempt to take lay people, not professionals, out of the process of deciding guilt and innocence in serious cases. The second, rightly mentioned by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, is the movementalmost without announcementto replace lay justices by paid professionals. More people are spotting this, and viewing it with increasing anger and frustration. The benefit of lay justice is that people who do other things and are properly representative of the community spend some of their time judging people in their community for lesser offences in the community. Increasingly we are seeing district judgesthe old stipendiary magistratespaid to do that job. It is a significant transition, about which many people are uncomfortable.
	The third element is the movement towards removing lay people from the criminal justice system altogether by offering more and more opportunities for people to buy their way out of justice through the fixed penalty notice system, whereby people never appear before a court at all. That may be entirely acceptable for someone who parks on a yellow line, which is an administrative matter that can be visibly dealt with, and for which guilt or innocence is difficult to dispute. It is wholly different from deciding whether someone has been assaulted in a scuffle on a Friday night outside the local pub. That is the background.
	May I make the obvious observation that I hope that everyone would expect us all to make? Nobody in the House underestimates the importance and seriousness of fraud and no one wants serious fraudsters to go free. We all acknowledge the importance of the work of the Serious Fraud Office, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police service in bringing people who commit serious fraud to justice. It is every bit as important, if not more so, than dealing with those who commit smaller frauds. Serious damage can be done to individuals and their lives by those fraudsters, and we want to bring them to book.
	One interesting aspect of today's debate is that we have had an opportunity to look at what has happened since the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was introduced and assess whether this remains as valid a proposition for the Government to advance. I have a simple set of tests as to whether we need to return to this territory, and I am led to the clear conclusion that we do not. I have not heard the Solicitor-General or any other Labour Member argue that under the present system, we have suddenly seen a great increase in acquittals and a great reduction in convictions.

Stephen Hesford: If the House had been able to implement this measure when the 2003 Act was passed, does the hon. Gentleman think that the Lord Chief Justice's protocol would have been more or less necessary, if everything had been done and dusted before now?

Simon Hughes: I think that it would have been equally necessary. The burden of all the evidence is that what we need to change is the process and the procedurethe organisation, management and investigation of cases of serious fraud, not the way in which they are tried. All the evidence leads me to that conclusion, and I hope that it would lead the hon. Gentleman to the same conclusion. He will know that there have been several reassessments of the evidence.
	In sequence, the first was the protocol, issued in March 2005 and referred to a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford). Secondly, a Bar Council report at the beginning of this year looked into the problem again, and was robust in its clear view that other matters were more important than changing from jury trial to judge-only trial. Thirdly, the Solicitor-General made a statement to the Houseoriginally given by the Attorney-General in the other placein July this year, after the Jubilee line case acquittal, announcing various proposals that amounted to the lessons learned from it. We have thus had three initiativestwo formal initiatives connected with improving the procedure, and new criminal procedure rules.
	We also await a final announcement of the Government's recommendations arising out of the cross-governmental review. One proposal is to have a financial court, which could consolidate good practice and employ practitioners suitable to the task. The Government have already conceded that High Court judges are the most appropriate for these cases, and there are strong arguments for using judges with sufficiently high qualifications to deal with them.
	All the movement has been in the direction of improving procedures and no one has arguedalthough implicit suggestions may have been made to that effectthat changing the basis of trial from jury to judge would increase the rate of convictions. If that argument is going to be used, it risks becoming an argument that juries are not suitable to judge guilt or innocence generally. As was said about health and safety cases, and as applies in many other cases, there is no evidence that the issues of honesty or dishonesty are more difficult for juries to understand in fraud cases than in modern cases involving computer and other IT evidence.

Mike O'Brien: I do not know whether judge-led trials will lead to an increase in the number of types of trials that lead to convictionswe shall have to wait and see how that evolvesbut I think that we may well see more people convicted, albeit not for that reason. There is no contradiction there. The reason is that the full culpability of a case can be looked into, and some people who might have dropped off as defendants because of the complexity of the case will no longer need to be dropped off. They can be put before the judge. We may see further convictions as a result of that. It is also the case that a broader range of evidence can be put before the judgeprobably more charges and more on the indictmentso we are looking at dealing with the full culpability of a case in a single trial, rather than severing it, dropping people off the end and having merely sample counts.

Simon Hughes: I can understand that argument, but I do not think that the prerequisite is to move from jury to judge-only trial. I think that the prerequisite for achieving what the Solicitor-General wants is to change procedures along the lines of the changes already made. My strongest argument against the Government on the procedure is to say that we have had three years of reviewing procedures and a year and a half since the new criminal procedures were introduced and the protocol was announced by the Lord Chief Justice. We have just enacted the Fraud Act 2006, though it is not yet fully in place. As the hon. Member for Beaconsfield said, we enacted the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004to give it its full namein which there is a different process. There is a procedure for dealing with certain parts of someone's alleged criminality, such as severing or taking sample counts, at one stage and getting the rest dealt with later.
	It must be logical to let those changes work through the system. It must be logical to let the Fraud Act 2006 come into place. It must be logical for the Government to announce the results of the intergovernmental review, which might produce a proposal for a financial court. It would then be possible for what the Solicitor-General reasonably argues should happen to happenfor other defendants or other charges to be added to what can be presented to the court. It has never been the case that in non-fraud criminal trials, every single count has gone on the indictment. The reality, as assessed, is that many charges have been put to one side and there has been a conviction on the substantive charges. Pleas or other considerations can then either be taken into consideration or not. It is the same with serious predatory sexual offenders. They are not fully charged, in order to avoid the horror of bringing everybody to court to give evidence. One selectively charges, and convicts. That is enough to give a jury the evidence and to give the person a serious sentence at the end of it. I understand the objective, but the changes already initiated, the changes announced but not yet implemented and the changes yet to be considered will all provide that opportunity.

Edward Garnier: Did the hon. Gentleman draw from the Solicitor-General's recent intervention the suggestion that cases are not being prosecuted because they would have to be pushed in front of a jury and therefore are unlikely to reach a satisfactory verdict as far as the prosecution is concerned? Surely if there were any mileage in that, and if there were any substance in the Government's arguments, they would have come forward with evidence to show that the Serious Fraud Office or the Crown Prosecution Service had not prosecuted in some cases because they did not think that they could get them across to a jury. We have not heard any such evidence.

Simon Hughes: Indeed not. The system is clear. We have annual reports from the Serious Fraud Office. It reports on not just what it does, but how successfully it does it. It can ask for extra resources. It is a relatively new organisation. I have heard nothing to suggest that it regards the failure to achieve a higher success rate than the 56 per cent. we heard about, or the 80 per cent. on the basis of the other count, or other things, as due to the jury system. That is not the case.

Dominic Grieve: The hon. Gentleman may also wish to ponder the point that the Law Officers and prosecution authorities, in considering the test of whether to bring a prosecution, make a decision on the basis of whether a jury, properly directed, will convict. We have not heard from the Solicitor-Generalwe might hear at the endwhether that test will be altered for trial by judge alone. On the face of it, it is embedded in our constitutionand I do not see how that test squares with the system that the Government are trying to set up.

Simon Hughes: I was going to make just that point to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). Under our system, the police investigate and collect the evidence, which is then looked at by the Crown Prosecution Service. It has to comply with two tests in every case. The first is whether there is a better than 50 per cent. chance of conviction before whichever tribunal it isit would normally be a tribunal with a jury, by definition. The second is whether it is in the public interest. Those tests are not varied or altered. They are the tests that are applied.

Mike O'Brien: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the vast majority of trials in which the prosecution have gone through the procedure to make a judgment to prosecute are not conducted before a jury at all, but in the magistrates court. The direction is therefore quite proper, and will be able to stand.

Simon Hughes: I was trying to deal with the substantive point, rather than the supplementary point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. Of course more than 90 per cent. of all criminal trials take place, as we know, in magistrates courts. However, the principle of the justice system is that serious charges go before a jury of one's peers.
	I share the view expressed around the House that in the intervening period we have had a tokenistic consultation, which was only a consultation afterwardsin terms of how it was defined. It certainly did not honour what I understood was the undertaking made by the then Home Secretary to me across the Floor of the House in November 2003. There have been constructive discussions and constructive ideas have been put to Law Officers by the Conservative party and by me on behalf the Liberal Democrats, but they have not been responded to. We are where we are because there is a fundamental divide when it comes to the question, Are you in favour of jury trial for all these cases or not? That is not going to be changed.
	Why should those of us on this side of the argument stand our ground? First, because there should be one form of trial for serious offences and one form of justice dispensed, for reasons that many people have given. A judgment by a single judge, with written reasons, for certain cases and a judgment by a jury, on the basis of guilty or not guilty, are different forms of justice. There is no logic to say that one person who has committed an offence should have a different form of justice from somebody else.
	The reality is that, however great the integrity of the judge, there will be suspicion. The more cases there are in which somebody is the judge of both the fact and the lawgoing in and out of all the questions about looking at documents and rejecting them, and rejecting evidencethe more cause for suspicion. There will be cause for suspicion where at the moment there is none. People know that all the evidence that is to be used to decide guilt or innocence will be seen or heard by the jury, and by everybody else in the court.
	Secondly, I have argued for many years, as have many people on the Liberal Democrat Benches, for votes of equal value in all parts of the country. This issue is about verdicts of equal value in all parts of the country. The principle is important. A verdict by a jury is much more conclusive, much more commanding of public confidence, and much more likely to stand and not be the subject of a considered appeal, than verdicts by judges alone.
	Thirdlythis point has been well made elsewhereit is highly unacceptable that the professionals will be tried by the professionals, and the white-collar offender by the white-collar professional judge. That is not an acceptable way of dividing the way in which society administers its justice. It is the professionalisation of the justice system. That is against all our tradition, which has been very successful.
	Fourthly, to be blunt, there is much more confidence in juries than in judges. That is not because judges do not do an excellent job, but because the public trust their own. The most logical reason is this: in a jury, at least 10 people have to come to a view that the person is guilty. That is a much more satisfactory outcome than one person coming to a view that somebody is guilty. That is better not just for defendants and the public, but for judges. The answer to the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) that was being disputedabout saving judges from being the subject of any sort of corruptibility riskis that jurors in long trials will do only one jury trial. They will be exempt for the rest of their lives and will not come back again. There is no point in their being a target, because they are not likely to be put in that position again. The same does not apply to judges. The situation is entirely different from that which applies in a civil case, where the same sort of people will not be enmeshed in the same sort of risk of losing their liberty for a long time.
	Above all, there is no evidence that the system is quicker or that the verdicts are more accurate. If the Solicitor-General had been able to show that since the Government first wanted to go down this road in 2000 or 2001, all the evidence had come in their directionif he had been able to say, Look at the percentage of cases that have failed. Look at the percentage of cases that the Serious Fraud Office has said it hasn't been able to deal with,there would have been a case. If there had been reports commissioned by the Government that said that the Jubilee line case collapsed because the jury did not understand it or did not get the whole picture, or if the jurors had said, Terribly sorry guys, but it was all beyond us, or, We didn't think we were getting the whole picture, there would be new evidence. However, there is no new evidence. Indeed, the evidence has been going in the opposite direction.
	Although the Liberal Democrats believe that this may not be a general attack on juriesI accept what the Solicitor-General says about thatit is a specific attack. It is what my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) calls, one specimen count. If we let the specimen count stick, the danger is that the Government will find arguments for saying that long cases and cases of a certain complexity should be passed over to the new system. There is a logical progressionand that is a dangerous road to go down. Of course, we cannot say that that is what will happen, but it is impossible to resist the argument that it could happen, once the link is broken. It is the law of attrition. The movement becomes difficult to resist. That is why we have to stand our ground where we are.
	There is a strong constitutional tradition in this country that we depend on a robust Parliament with independence from the Executiveand robust judges, lay magistrates and juries that are independent of the Executive, too. On these Benches and elsewhere, we will defend the jury system. We believe that it works well, and with the new procedural changes it will work even better. The new improvements should be seen, tested, reviewed and allowed to take their time. In a few years' time Ministers will not have a case to argue, because necessary changes will have been made. It is not a necessary change to replace jurorsrepresentatives of the great British publicwith professional judges, and thus to change the whole nature of the way in which some people are tried, and tried entirely satisfactorily.

Stephen Hesford: May I make my speech in two parts?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. But all at once would be helpful.

Stephen Hesford: I will try to juggle my parallel arguments at the same time, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	First, I want to deal with the serial bad points made by Opposition Members. The point made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about the Lord Chief Justice's protocol does not workthe House and the other place will want to take note of thisbecause, although there is a point of principle about protecting the jury system, all the points that we are hearing are the same ones that were made before the protocol was ever even dreamed of as a safeguard. The protocol cannot be prayed in aid of the arguments that hon. Members have been making over the years. The House rejected those arguments; if it had not done so, we would not have section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The hon. Gentleman makes a hollow point because the two things are not connected.
	We have also heard the hollow threat of repeala cheap political point about a stage in the future that will not come about because Labour Members will not have to relinquish responsibility for these matters. We will thus not have a short-term measure. That cheap party political point was on a par with many of the cheap points that have been made today.
	There is no new point of principle here. The House has withdrawn people's right to a trial by jury when charged with certain offences over the years. When I was a young law student, I read that there was a right to a trial by jury when drink-driving was first introduced. For reasons of administrative justice, that right was taken away by the Conservative Government of the 1970s. There is thus no new point of principle about withdrawing the right to a trial by jury for certain offences.
	My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) made a thoroughly bad point about the corruptibility of judges, which the Solicitor-General and I showed to be ridiculous. I think that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said that it was facetiousand it was. The point was not worthy of debate.

Michael Fabricant: The hon. Gentleman should say specious or spurious.

Stephen Hesford: Fatuous.
	We should add all the points that have been made together. I was taught as a very junior member of the Bar that if one has a series of bad points, putting them all in front of a tribunal will not make any of them any better, but just weary the tribunal. I argue that there is no new point of principle.

David Burrowes: As a new Member, I will focus on the present. If we put to one side the fundamental points of principle, can we deal with the matter of practice? Since the criminal procedure rules were put in place, where is the evidence, from a relatively small number of cases, that there is a real need to change what many of us consider to be a fundamental principle?

Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman makes the same intervention as he made on the Solicitor-General, so in that sense he is consistent. The argument for reducing the right to trial by jury in these few serious fraud cases, which was made in and accepted by the House, remains as it was in 2003. There has been no change. The argument was made then and the House made a decision. The only thing that we are deciding today is whether the House and the other place will allow us to bring the measure into force.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: My hon. Friend mentioned a point that I made. I am sorry to say that I do not know the discipline in which he practised the law. If he had practised in crime, he would know that when one deals with criminals, one deals mainly with menand some womenwho are sometimes of great violence and great desperation. Such men will do almost anything to obtain an acquittal and are sometimes capable of deploying large sums of money. When we discussed the provisions of the 2003 Act that allowed for judge-only trials in cases in which juries were nobbled, we were told that that activity was frequent and dangerous. If there is a judge-only system, attempts will undoubtedly be made to bribe, bully and cajole judges. Such attempts are not part of our system. I am not saying for one moment that the vast majority of judges will be open to that, but they will be exposed to it. One of the huge benefits of our system is that they are not exposed to such activity. If a judge sitting on his own acquits someone and it looks to the press as though there is a substantial body of evidence, suspicion is bound to grow. At the moment, that is wholly unknown in our system, but there are judges in our system who might be corruptible. If my hon. Friend does not understand that point, he flies in the face of judicial

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman has made quite a lengthy intervention.

Stephen Hesford: If you do not mind, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will leave that intervention to lie where it was, because it has made a bad point even worse.

Edward Garnier: That is a mere insult. The hon. Gentleman should meet the point of the argument.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. If the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) wishes to intervene, he knows how to do so.

Edward Garnier: I was suggesting to the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) that if he thinks that the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) is of little value, rather than insulting the hon. and learned Gentleman, perhaps he would condescend to argue against it, rather than grandly saying, I'll leave it where it lies.

Stephen Hesford: I am sorry, but I have already dealt with the point.
	A further bad point was made about a single judge dealing with the criminal burden of evidence and proof. It was suggested that somehow the instruction to deal with evidence that a jury gets could not be applied to a single judge. As the Solicitor-General said, it is applied in the Diplock courts. It is applied in civil jurisdictions, where judges apply not the civil standard of proof in serious civil cases involving allegations of fraud and the like, but the criminal burden and standard of proof. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General also made it clear that the paid magistracydeputy judges in the magistrates courtapply those principles all the time and deal with 98 per cent. of criminal cases. The idea that a High Court judge could not deal with fraud cases appropriately is ridiculous. It is just another example of the serial bad points that are being made.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I have been wanting to raise a matter about Diplock courts for some time. When they were debated, it was said repeatedly that the practice of Diplock courts would never be used as a Trojan horse to extend the concept of trial by judge alone. Why are they now being brought up in such a way?

Stephen Hesford: I am simply pointing out that judges can apply the relevant burden of proof in single-judge cases.

Mike O'Brien: As I mentioned Diplock courts, perhaps it is best that I deal with the point. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) suggested that we would have a European Court of Human Rights challenge and be in difficulties with this procedure if public interest immunity certificates were an issue in a case. I pointed out that that issue had been dealt with in Diplock courts. I was not suggesting that Diplock courts were a Trojan horse for this measurefar from it. We are looking at the possibility of moving from such courts. My hon. and learned Friend made a point on the law; I dealt with the point on the law and I did so effectively. He did not, in his response, do anything more than make a general attack on Diplock courts. He needs to deal with the legal point, which is a different one.

Stephen Hesford: I agree with the Minister, who has dealt with the point.
	The second part of my speech is about the effect of what we are doing today and the reason why we are doingit. In an intervention on the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) I suggested that one reason has to do with case management. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey in effect adopted that point in what I consider to be an erroneous argument. However, he emphasised for me the point that the provision is part of a package for the proper prosecution of fraud cases. Nobody in the House is not fully behind the idea that what we seek, in the House and in the courts, is the fair and proper prosecution of serious fraud cases.

Simon Hughes: I have resisted intervening until now. Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that we cannot judge the effect of the changes that have already taken place in management, the changes that are not yet in place but have been agreed, and the changes that have been considered but not yet announced, until some years have passed and we have seen the results? It is ridiculous to suggest that we need something else when we have not had a good run at looking at the benefits of the changes already in the pipeline.

Stephen Hesford: The hon. Gentleman misapplies himself to the Government's developing agenda. If the measure comes to pass, as I sincerely hope it will, in a fraud case where the prosecution have made an application to have the matter dealt with by a single judge, the judge will have in front of him or her all the points mentioned by the hon. Gentlemanthe protocol and so onso that he or she can decide whether the case should go to a non-jury trial. If, on all the evidence, there is no reason for a case to go to a non-jury trial, it will not. As I understand the Government's casethe Minister will tell me if I am wrongthis provision is an option, not an automatic procedure. I am obliged that my hon. and learned Friend comforts me with a little nod. As with any procedure, that judgment will be subject to appeal in the Court of Appeal, which can determine whether the judge has exercised his or her jurisdiction correctly, so there is oversight. This is a way of better enabling the prosecution to manage serious cases.
	I will not repeat all the points made by the Minister, but what I find attractive is the fact that if the Bill is passed it will act as a deterrent against white-collar crime. We seek to minimise such crime and improve access to justice in such cases in our courts. My hon. and learned Friend was, for understandable reasons, slightly more circumspect than I must be, but I believe that the Bill will result in more guilty pleas. I believe that it will effect a better balance of justice than the current system. The Minister argued that more cases will be brought because those on the periphery of cases will be brought back into the picture.
	One thing that has marked the approach to crime of the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats since 1997, when I came into the House, is their lack of support, time and again, when we try to legislate to make the criminal justice system more effective on behalf of the people whom we represent. I pointed out to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield that we had crossed swords on a number of such Bills over the years. I have to say that the Conservatives' approachnot necessarily that of the hon. Gentlemanhas always been one of trench warfare. We are trying to rebalance the system so that it is fair and it does the job on behalf of our constituents.
	I clearly remember that the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which has toughened up the process and made it more usable in the courts, was fought at every opportunity by Opposition Members. In that case the Government were trying to get at the assets of those engaged in serious crimewhich involved huge sumsand cut down on such criminality. In this case, too, we are talking about cases involving huge sums. Whether or not the Opposition intend it, the effect is the sametheir so-called defence of principle is in fact a defence of those engaged in serious white-collar crime.  [Interruption.] There are groans on the Opposition Benches, but I am afraid that that is the effect. Opposition Members have to decide whether they want to prosecute those involved in serious crime. I believe that these measures will help to do so.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will my hon. Friend at least accept it from me, as someone who has prosecuted many serious fraud cases, that the desire to see white-collar criminals go free is not one that motivates me?

Stephen Hesford: Unless my hon. and learned Friend has gone over to the Opposition Benches, I was not talking about him; I was talking about the Opposition.
	In the academic, purist argument advanced by the Opposition, it is suggested that such cases are victimless crimes, and that it does not matter whether case management or the proper prosecution of such crimes is seriously considered. However, missing trader fraud, for example, is a serious attack on VAT revenue. Classically, that is a type of fraud that might be prosecuted under the Bill. The Revenue must send out a clear message that we will prosecute such crimes, and that we take seriously any attack on the VAT system. Opposition Members give the game away when they say that the Bill is some sort of revenue exercise. Does the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) wish to support the proper collection of VAT and the proper protection of revenue, or not? Apparently not.
	The Bill has a fine legal tradition behind it. Lord Roskill came up with similar proposals, and Lord Justice Auld dealt with the same issue and made similar representations. The proposal is not one that the Government thought up by themselves, and prepared on the back of an envelope. It is part of a serious legal tradition.

Mike O'Brien: My hon. Friend is quite right. There is a serious history of such proposals, and eminent judges have made reports on the matter. Since the passing of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, there has been further evidence of the importance of introducing such a measure. I referred to cases that had to be severed. In the Talbot village trust case, completed in 2004, the trial judge had to order the prosecution case to be reduced for management reasons. Again, in the Versailles case of 2004, which involved Cushnie and others, the judge ordered three counts against one of the defendants to be severed in the interests of trial management. Finally, in the Global Wildlife Trust case in 2005, the prosecution had to limit the size of the case.

Douglas Hogg: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it not correct that interventions of that kind should be incorporated in the winding-up speech that we are shortly to hear?

Madam Deputy Speaker: I have indicated that all interventions should be brief. It is for me, rather than for hon. Members, to decide when interventions are not brief, as I am chairing the debate. I call Mr. Mike O'Brien.

Mike O'Brien: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My point was merely that the evidence since 2003 has continued to show that the changes are necessary.

Stephen Hesford: Opposition Members have asked Members on the Labour Benches, collectively, to produce the evidence, but when my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General talks about the evidence since 2003, the Opposition do not want to hear it, and instead come up with a spurious point of order. My hon. and learned Friend makes the good point that since the 2003 Act, the same pattern of error in the presentation of fraud cases has continued, as has the same pattern of complaint from senior judges. That was my point. My hon. and learned Friend reinforces those points, which concern those who try to deal with such cases daily.
	The hon. Member for Beaconsfield said that the mismanagement of cases never had anything to do with the jury, but that is completely wrong. One of the reasons such cases often cannot get off the ground is that the considerations of how to manage them with a jury sometimes defeat that object. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General convincingly made the case that if such large cases were dealt with by one tribunal considering all the charges, at one sitting, the criminality could be dealt with satisfactorily. That is one reason why my hon. and learned Friend introduced section 43 of the 2003 Act, and why he has brought the Bill before the House.
	This short Bill deals with the will of Parliament. It is Parliament's will that section 43 should be on the statute book, and it is Parliament's will that we should, at least in principle, allow a High Court judge to consider whether a handful of serious fraud cases could be better managed under the system that we are considering. I support the Bill, and I look forward to the proposal being available to the criminal justice system and the Serious Fraud Office.

Douglas Hogg: The hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford), who has just spoken for 25 minutes, reminds us of the will of Parliament. It is worth reminding him that the will of Parliament embraces the will of both Houses, not just this House. A little bit of modesty might be in place from him, because in the other place there are many Members who have a great deal of experience, both of practising in the courts and of presiding over trials. We need to remember that the other place has robustly refused to pass the measure, and has made it wholly plain that it will not pass it. When we speak of the will of Parliament, let us actually face the fact: we are talking about the will of the Executive, who will rely on a three-line Whip to force through a profoundly illiberal measure. To repeat what I said to the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), I very much hope that the other place will stand firm on the matter. If it is to be threatened with the Parliament Act, so be it. I hope that it will not pass the measure at any time, so that it will have to be forced through by the Parliament Act.
	We have been reminded from time to time that the issue has previously been addressed by reviews, and that is perfectly true. It was addressed by Lord Roskill, and by Lord Justice Auld only a few years ago. Let us remind ourselves, too, that neither review recommended the measure that is before the House. It is perfectly true that Lord Justice Auld said that there could, in serious and complicated fraud cases, be trial by a judge alone, but only when the defendant so elected. In fact, what he said was that in the generality of such cases, the trial should be by a judge alone, with a special panel of lay assessors. Incidentally, that was the view of Lord Roskill, too. Let us be wholly plain: the measure suggested today is quite beyond those advised by any expert commission. The measure was wholly rejected in discussion in the other place, and has very few friends in the Chamber today.

Stephen Hesford: May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman a straight question? If the proposal before us was for a judge sitting with a tribunal, would he be in favour of it?

Douglas Hogg: I would give that proposal serious consideration, but in the end, my answer would be no. I am in favour of jury trials, and I shall come to my reasons for that later. I begin by defining the questions that I shall ask of myself and the House. My first question is whether there is anything inherent in jury trials that makes that form of trial inappropriate for complex and lengthy fraud cases. I wish to find out both whether such cases cannot be tried by a jury, and whether juries cannot try such cases. My second question is quite different: are there arguments of principle that should cause us to say that jury trial should be retained? If the answer to that is yes, I shall ask a third question: are there any practical arguments that reinforce the view that jury trials should be retained? Those are the three questions that I wish to put before the House.
	First, I wish to consider whether or not a jury is capable of properly trying a complicated fraud case or, to put it differently, whether a complicated and lengthy fraud case should not be put before a jury. I have some personal experience of the matter, although not as much as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). He is modest about his achievements, but there are few barristers with his experience in this fieldI certainly do not presume to claim for one moment that I have such experience. His views are the fruit of years of trial practice, and they deserve serious attention. I have less experience but, in the past few years, I have taken part in two long fraud cases, both of which lasted more than 40 days, so I am familiar with the matter. In the other place, there are many Members who have much greater experience than me, and the majority of criminal practitioners, both solicitors and barristers, share my conclusions.
	Is there anything about fraud trials which means that they are not a proper subject for jury trial? The Bill asks us to consider the proposition that fraud cases are too burdensome for juries, because they are too complicated and sometimes long, so jury trials are inappropriate. The Solicitor-General shifted his ground on some issues, but he told us that he does not seek to assert that fraud trials are too complicated for juries, because they cannot manage the evidence. I share that view. Having dealt with fraud cases, I have come to the positive conclusion that juries understand full well the nature of the evidence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) pointed out, in the Jubilee line case, members of the jury went out of their way in interviews to stress the fact that they were fully conversant with the evidence, notwithstanding the fact that many months had elapsed since the evidence was given.
	We can therefore start from the robust assumption that juries are perfectly capable of understanding complicated evidence. That is jolly lucky, because many other trials involve complicated evidence. Trying to understand DNA evidence is not easy. Understanding lengthy phone schedules is not easy, and neither is understanding ballistics. Studying some blood samples is not easy, yet those are things that, time and again, juries are called on to resolve. I therefore have no time for the argument that such things are too difficult for jurors. As for the length of trial, it is perfectly true that it can be a problem, but I remind the House that jurors can be excused if they can provide a good reason. In the Jubilee line trial, the jurors were ready to sign up for a six to 12-month stint. I do not accept that it is impossible to empanel a jury, or that it is too burdensome to do so.
	Questions of complexity and length are not confined to fraud casesan issue to which I shall return. Time and again, they arise in serious crime. Terrorism and conspiracy are a case in point, as are multi-handed murders, to which the hon. and learned Member for Medway referred, and affrays. Such trials can go on for months and months. Once we accept the proposition that an excessively long trial cannot be heard by a jury, we assert a principle that will destroy our civil rights.
	Secondly, are there issues of principles that should lead us to conclude that jury trials should be retained? I am in no doubt about the matter, as I am wholly persuaded that major issues of principle are at stake. I am quite certain that public respect for law is based on the belief that at the end of the day serious trials are resolved by juries. If our liberties are taken away, we do not want them to be taken away by a single man or woman sitting alone. For many people, there is a huge gap between the defendant and the judge, who often appears to be part of the establishment or an instrument of the state who does not sympathise with ordinary people's lives. If we allow judge-only trial, a gap will open up between the citizen and the judiciary, and between the citizen and the state.
	A further unusual consideration is the perverse verdict. There are cases in which the guilt of the defendant is established beyond doubt by the overwhelming weight of evidence, yet the jury chooses to acquit. It can exercise that important safeguard for various reasons. For example, it may consider that the state is acting oppressively, as in the Ponting case. It may consider that a conviction would be wholly unfair, as in cases of mercy killing. It may consider that a trial and its consequences are disproportionateI draw attention to road traffic legislation, and the fact that death by careless driving attracts a maximum penalty of five years. The possibility of a jury making what is technically known as a perverse verdict and refusing to convict in such cases is an important safeguard that defends the liberties of all. Arguments of principle are therefore in play.
	We should consider pragmatic arguments, too. The hon. and learned Member for Medway asked some important questions that were not resolved by the Solicitor-General. The points that he made about public interest immunity were quite correct, and there is no sensible answer to his anxieties. If he will forgive me, I will develop his argument. At the moment, in a trial by judge and jury, the judge judges the law and the jury judges the facts. In long cases, when points of admissibility arise, submissions are made to the trial judge on previous convictions, hearsay evidence, alleged confessions and so on. The judges makes a ruling on the admissibility of those issues. If he decides in favour of the defendant, the jury will never know of the previous convictions, the alleged confessions or the hearsay evidence. Once a judge sits alone, he is called on first to make that ruling. If it is adverse for the defendant, the information is taken into account. If he makes a ruling, which he may be driven to, favourable to the defendant, he still knows the previous convictions. He still knows the hearsay evidence. He still knows the alleged admissions. The trial judge will say, of course, It will be put out of my mind, but how reassuring is that in any real sense to a defendant facing a serious charge?
	I know full well that that situation arises in tribunals. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) sits as a deputy district judge and he has to come to exactly such a decision. He will forgive me if I say that the cases in which he presides do not attract very long prison sentences. It is a problem, it has always been a problem, but it is mitigated partly because the sentences are not so long, with a right of appeal to the Crown court, and partly because in many cases there is more than one judge sitting on the tribunalfor example, lay justices. It is an inherent problem. Whether or not it infringes the European convention, now incorporated into domestic law, is a matter for another discussion, but it goes to the quality of the justice that will be administered.
	I shall make one final point and then my conclusion. Case management powers were again touched upon by the hon. and learned Member for Medway and referred to by his hon. Friendif that is not an inappropriate word in the circumstancesthe hon. Member for Wirral, West. There has been a huge change in recent years in the judicial powers of the court to regulate what can be done in trials. It is now much easier for the judge, especially when working in association with a co-operative prosecution, to ensure that indictments are not too long, that counts are carefully focused, and that the evidence is confined to that which is truly relevant. These considerations and the case management powers will help over time to deliver the objectives that many on the Government Benches seek to advance in support of the Bill.
	To conclude, I feel very strongly about the Bill. I believe that it is part of a campaign by the Government systematically to undermine the protection which the law of England has afforded its citizens for hundreds of years. When they come forward and say that it is not part of an attack on jury trial, I recall the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial Bill and the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) (No. 2) Bill, which we have had cause to consider. When I consider their protestations that they wish to rebalance the criminal law as between victim and defendant, I bear it in mind that many defendants are innocent people, or at least persons against whom there is not sufficient evidence. I call to mind the Criminal Justice Act 2003, many parts of which are a serious infringement of civil liberties.
	I am extremely hostile to any attempt by the Government to diminish civil and legal rights, so I am against the Bill in principle. It is not necessary, for the reasons advanced by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway. Juries are perfectly capable of dealing with both complexity and length. There are issues of principle here engaged. There are arguments of pragmatism here engaged. Collectively the House should give a resounding no to the Bill. If it is forced through, as I have no doubt it will beon a three-line Whipby people who have not attended the arguments on the matter, the other House must stand firm. If the Government want to use the Parliament Act to pass through an authoritarian and disgraceful measure, so be it. That will be in keeping with this Government.

Humfrey Malins: I begin by declaring an interest as a Crown court recorder and as a part-time district judge. I associate myself entirely with the words spoken by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). I bow to the expert legal knowledge built up over so many years by both of them. All of us would do well to heed their arguments. I only wish that more than one Member who supports the Bill was present on the Government Benches to listen to what the hon. and learned Member for Medway said.

Stephen Hesford: Was it not Churchill who said that one is enough?

Humfrey Malins: The hon. Gentleman has made his contribution. I shall go no further.
	I agree wholeheartedly with two points made by the hon. and learned Member for Medway. First, we have had far too much legislation in the field of criminal law in the past few years. Judges with whom I sit and to whom I talk are baffled by the volume of legislation, most of which is intended purely to get a headline and half of which is never implemented. It gets worse by the day. Secondly, the hon. and learned Gentleman rightly pointed out that none of the judiciary see any merit in the Bill.
	The Bill is short, containing only four clauses, but it is massively important not just because of its contents, but because of what it might lead to in the jury system in future. I suppose that at first sight the Bill might not seem controversial. On the surface, the Government seem to be saying: Some fraud trials are terribly complex and some are terribly long. Wouldn't it be simpler if in a handful of cases, perhaps only half a dozen a yearnothing to worry aboutthere is a provision for the trial of such a fraud case to be heard by a judge alone. Wouldn't we save a lot of time and grief?
	On the face of it, that approach is quite alluring, but let us look a little more carefully. The Government's arguments do not stand up to proper scrutiny. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham dealt with this very well. If the issue is one of complexity, would not Labour Members accept that not only fraud trials are complex? Earlier, I gave the example of a drugs trial in which I was involved years ago, which bore all the hallmarks of the complexity that the Solicitor-General argues should lead to a judge-only trial. It involved hundreds of thousands of documents and financial dealings all over the world, yet under the Government's provision that complex case would not be subject to a judge-only trial. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) made the excellent point that health and safety cases in which he has been involved have been just as complex as any fraud trial could be. If the issue is one of length, then surely we should be focusing on case management to shorten cases.
	If those are weak arguments for the Government to advance, I have concluded that it is essential for this House to vote against the Bill for a different reasonbecause I am convinced that it is yet another step along the road that this Government wish to travel, leading in due course to a massive reduction in jury trials throughout our criminal justice system. It continues a shift of power away from the people and fits neatly with the Government's desire to move power nearer to the centre, based on a presumption that the state or its appointed officers know much better than the people.
	If we could be absolutely certain that no more than, say, six complex or lengthy fraud trials a year would be handled by a judge alone without a jury, we might just be satisfied, but we cannot be certain. Let us consider what the Solicitor-General said earlier. When I mentioned the complicated drugs case, he used the phrase, We have no plans at this stage. Later on, in response to another intervention, he said, We have no plans. Previously, unless I misheard him, he had said that the Government have not ruled out extending the proposals. So we have a Government who talk about half a dozen cases a year and a Minister who has more or less made it plain to the House that it is at the back of their mind to extend the principle beyond complex and lengthy serious fraud cases to other cases altogether.
	Looking back on the Government's attitude to jury trial over the past few years gives greater strength to our feelings that they may yet go further. This is the Government who some years ago introduced measures that would have given the courts, not the defendant, the ultimate decision on where cases were to be tried, thereby taking rights away from defendantsthe Government who had the gall to say that they were convinced that the courts, rather than defendants, were best qualified to reach a view on the best venue for a trial. That smacks of a conceited We know better than you attitudescant concern there for the rights of the individual.
	I think that I heard the Solicitor-General sayI could hardly believe itJuries are right for some cases, but not for others. That kind of comment makes me think that we have a Government who are saying in terms, Now listen: we're not going to bother any more with the rights of the individual to select trial by his peershis equals, other members of his community. We're not bothered about thatwe're more concerned with our own view as to what is right for a particular defendant.
	If we concede the principle that complex or lengthy fraud cases should be tried by a judge alone without a jury, the Government's next step might be to try to widen that principle to ensure that all serious offences, for example, could be tried only by a judge alone. Gradually, they could whittle away the whole principle of trial by one's peers. There is a risk that, if this trend continues, jury trial could disappear from our system altogether. All this is happening at a time when the real problem facing the people of this country is the inability of the police to detect the crimes, and to be on the streets to catch the criminals and bring them to court. Frankly, on any list of the public's priorities relating to the criminal justice system, the need for fraud cases to be tried by a judge alone would be right at the bottom.

David Heath: The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. The jurisdiction that is said to have the best record of prosecuting fraud effectivelythe United States of Americais also one that the Government adduce as an exemplar to this country for dealing effectively with white-collar crime. Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the United States has no problem with jury trials for complex fraud cases, as was evidenced by the Enron trial?

Humfrey Malins: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and his intervention gives me the chance to pay tribute to him and his colleagues for the way in which they have stood up for the protection of civil rights over the years.
	We all know the advantages of a jury, but let me just mention one or two. First, they temper legalism by their sheer common sense. There also is immense value in having a real participation in the administration of justice by ordinary citizens. The random nature of jury selection ensures that they are utterly fair and independent. In fraud cases, the issue is nearly always dishonesty. Who could be better than a jury to judge the issue of dishonesty? By reason of their number, their mix and their experiences of the world outside the court, they are surely better equipped than a judge alone, no matter how able the judge might be, to access the reliability and credibility of a defendant and of witnesses.

Bill Wiggin: My hon. Friend is making a most interesting and cogent argument, and I am completely convinced by what he is saying. Does he agree that another problem that we have to face in our courts is that justice must be seen to be done? The words, the terminology and the arguments must therefore be put forward in a comprehensible manner in order to include the jury, and the defendant is therefore also fully equipped with the facts in the most understandable way.

Humfrey Malins: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The jury is an integral part of the whole principle of justice being seen to be done.
	It is also a very good thing that juries are not lawyers. They are not paid by the legal system; they are not beholden to it, and they are not part of the state. That is a huge advantage. If Ministers want to understand the real value of juries, all they need to do is travel to other countries and talk to some of those involved in the administration of justice abroad. Inevitably, those people will say how much they envy the British system of trial by jury. It must not be tampered with.
	Juries are also anonymous, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway mentioned earlier. That is a huge advantage. They come to court, they deliver a verdict, they drift back into their community and go home to lead their normal livesend of story. A single judge trying a case enjoys no such privilege. If this trend continues, judges in this country will become more politicised. They will have a higher profile, and they will be subject to more criticism and pressure. I do not think that that would be healthy.
	If there is a problem with the present system, and if it is true that some cases are very complex and might last for many months, the remedy can be found by taking another route. First, let us ensure that those who prosecute and defend these cases are extremely able and that they present the issues in a short and simple manner. In other words, we need better case management. We have had the rules for a little while now; let us allow them to bed down and to work. Better case management will lead to shorter cases. It is entirely possible for cases to be further simplified, and it is essential to let case management rules bed in properly. Juries do not lengthen fraud trials. In a great number of such cases, a huge percentage of the time is taken up with legal arguments between the barristers and the judge in the absence of the jury. There is no evidence to support the proposition that juries find fraud cases too difficult; quite the reverse.
	An important principle is at stake today. Why do I speak so strongly in favour of the jury? It is because I believe that it represents one of the great protections for the people against an over-mighty state. In all my years of trying cases in the Crown court with a jury, I have not once found a defendant who was not content to be tried by his peers. I have never found a defendant who felt that the jury was biased against him or her. The defendant might say that the judge was biased against him, or gave him a rotten sentence, but I have never heard a word of criticism from a defendant against a jury and its verdict.

Nicholas Winterton: I have listened to my hon. Friend's speech, and I apologise for not having been present for a lot of the debate. This is an extremely dangerous Bill. It undermines this country's traditional justice system. Are not the Government insulting jurors by saying that they are incompetent to judge in a complicated fraud case? That is unacceptable.

Humfrey Malins: How right my hon. Friend is. With the Bill, the Government appear to be saying to jurorsmy hon. Friend makes the point so wellin terms, You are not up to the job. It is too difficult for you. That is a great insult to our jury system, which has served us so well for so long. The truth is that the people of this country trust juries, and defendants in court trust juries. It is equally true, sadly, that the only people who do not trust juries are this Labour Government.

Richard Shepherd: It is a curiosity that the Members taking part in this debate are representatives of English constituencies. In a sense, that is right because we are talking about England and English law. So far, everyone who has spoken has been a lawyer. I am not. I am proud, however, to have heard the lawyers, with the exception of but one, from Cheshire

Stephen Hesford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Richard Shepherd: I will continue. With the exception of the hon. Gentleman, to whom I will give way later, all those lawyers have made reference to something that is wider and that unites us: a sense of England. If anyone were to describe that sense of England, they would think of the history of this country. One of the features of the history of this country that has given confidence to its people over the centuries is that an ordinary man may sit in a jury and decide on the truth of a case. It cannot be suborned.
	That was not easily won. We had Star courts. From Magna Carta, we had the concept that nobles alone should judge themselves. The very words in Magna Carta, however, can be used to mean something elsethat each and every one of us shall be tried by our peers. We, the people, will try ourselves. Why is it that in common-law jurisdictionsCanada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Statesthat is a constitutional requirement and cannot be suborned by an Executive? Why are we not asking ourselves that question?
	I believe profoundly that our very sense of liberty and confidence in our system of government and its institutions derive from the participation of the common man and woman in the great institutions of state. That is why I think that the Government are very misdirected in seeking to throw out a feature of our system of government that has survived across eight centuries or so. The common-law tradition is remarkable, and as many of the lawyers who have spoken today have said, it is a feature that is often commented on by other countries with different systems. I do not denigrate the intent behind other legal systems. I know that they seek the same objective as we seek, which is justice, although their perspective is different from ours. Our system, however, has been central to the equality of the citizen in this country, and the march that took us there.
	In the past 10 years, the extraordinary progress of this Government in seeking to modernise the institutions of state so casually and in such a half-baked fashion has created a cynicism about motives and aspirations. Not only do I feel that they so often misdirect themselves; I think that the incompetence associated with the measures that they propose undermines what was central to the jury systemconfidence in the law, and hence confidence in justice.
	It is not an old hanging judge who decides whether I am guilty. He may pass sentence, but it is others who decide, picked at random from the people of our country. The jury system is a check on the misogyny or the narrownessif it is trueof judges. It is a checkif it is trueon the instruments and intentions of Government, because the greatest Government can be brought to a halt by the decisions of those in the jury box. Why does Blackstone, a constitutional authority, prize the institution of the jury across seven centuries? Why does Devlin, in his Trial by Jury, see in it the many little parliaments of England? Because it is the common man and woman who are having an impact on decisions that affect lives.
	When we talk about justice, we must feel that the system is fair, we must feel that it is open, and we must feel that that it is accessible. Now the great minds that form this Government think that that is not appropriate. I tell them that they again misjudge something that is essential to the character of this country, and hence, by their misdirections, undermine confidence in themselves. But this little jury, the Parliament of England, must express a view on what we stand for. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Hykeham and Sleaford

Douglas Hogg: Other way round.

Richard Shepherd: As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) pointed out, Parliament is more than just us. There is another Chamber, and it will have a judgment, too.
	We are conscioushence the cynicismthat this is something that the Government have pencilled in for the Parliament Act. They want to suborn the passions that are expressed here today. I urge the House to stand by the arguments of every Member who has spoken so far, apart from the Solicitor-General and his hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford).

Quentin Davies: We in this House often have our best debates on matters of fundamental and constitutional principle, and that has been the case this afternoon. We have heard a number of extremely goodeven memorablespeeches, including that of the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). However, it is striking and very sad that in a debate on such an important matter, apart from the minimum team of the Minister, the Parliamentary Private Secretary and the Whip, only two Labour Members have even sat in on the debate, let alone taken part. Yet presumably they will all pour into the Chamber in an hour or two to vote down one of the fundamental liberties of the subject that has been with us for hundreds of years. The Labour party is addressing our constitutional liberties with an awesome and breathtaking degree of levity.

Stephen Hesford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Quentin Davies: I shall give way to one of the two Labour Members to whom I referred. He happens to be the one I disagree with, but he certainly has a right to be heard.

Stephen Hesford: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman, but has he not thought that, as several Members have reminded us, we have been around this track a few times? The principle he refers to is not at issue in this debate. What is at issue is a timetable motion. That is what this short Bill is about, and Labour Members have taken that into account in deciding whether to attend the debate.

Quentin Davies: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. This is not a timetable motion debate; it is a Second Reading debate on a self-standing Bill. It is true that there have been attacks beforeover the centurieson our fundamental liberties, including trial by jury, and those attacks have been seen off, including previous ones by this Government, but that does not make the issue under discussion any less important.
	I always approach such issues in the same way as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) evidently doesperhaps there is something in the Lincolnshire air that makes us automatically adopt the same attitude. I first address them as issues of principle, and then as issues of pragmatism, and then I test whether the pragmatic arguments are sufficiently strong to deserve that some compromise be made in the fundamental principle.
	The issue of principle is threefold. Opposition Members are all making similar pointsthey are mutually supportive and consistent points, and to a degree there is an overlap, but each Member has a slightly different perspective. I start from the position that although we in this country do not have a written constitution and we therefore do not have any foundational law, if we did have a foundational law Magna Carta would come as close as is possible to being it. The idea of trial by jury began in Magna Carta; so far as I know, its reference to trial by peers is the first time in the history of the human race that that idea was enshrined in a constitution-type document. It has not only been with us in this country ever since, but it has been followed by scores of countries around the worldin fact, by all those that have respectable systems of justice. We should treat it with the greatest respect and be extremely sceptical about eroding it.
	I must give credit to the House of Commons Library for drawing to my attention a quotation from Sir William Blackstone. It is good for all Members to read Blackstone because there is no more eloquent advocate of our constitutional liberties and the rationale for them. For the benefit of those who have not read the note produced by the Librarythat is a wonderful task that it always performs on such debates for MembersI wish to read out a few lines of it:
	yet let it be again remembered, that delays and little inconveniences in the forms of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.
	Those words were penned, presumably, rather more than 200 years ago, as they are part of Blackstone's Commentaries, but they might have been penned for this debate.

David Heath: The hon. Gentleman may or may not know that those words were also quoted with devastating effect in another place by a former Attorney-General of this very Government when this matter was last before us. Lord Morris of Aberavon produced a devastating critique of the Government's proposal to remove jury trial, and he was very effective in arguing, from the point of view of a former Minister who had taken such decisions in this place, that it was not necessary and entirely otiose.

Quentin Davies: I did not know that and I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for intervening and pointing that out to me and to the House in general. I obviously do not follow as closely as I should, and as he does, proceedings in the other place on these important matters. My starting point is that there must be a very strong presumption against eroding these fundamental liberties, and I am very glad that the Liberal Democrats are with us on this matter this afternoon.
	I come to the second point of principle about which I feel strongly. It is extremely important for public confidence in our criminal justice system that it should not become the protected private preserve of a professional caste. With due respect to those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and colleagues in all parts of the House, who are professional lawyers, it is not healthy for the law to become an arcane, closed system whereby the only people in a courtroom who are not lawyers are the defendant and the doorman. The jury system draws the wider citizenry into the process in a systematic way, which is extremely valuable.
	The third point of principle is that creating a two-tier criminal justice system is profoundly problematic. We all know that the distinction between people who have an automatic right, or the right to elect trial by jury, and those who are dealt with in a summary fashion, is a distinction between lesser and more serious offences. We could argue all afternoon about what constitute lesser and more serious offences, but the general point of common sense has always been that a serious offence is where a conviction would have had a very damaging and perhaps devastating effect on the life of the individual so convicted, because of the damage to their reputation or the considerable loss of liberty arising from a substantial sentence. We would all agree that, in that sense, speeding is not a very serious offence but murder is. We have to draw the line somewhere.
	If the Bill proceeds today, serious fraud, which has always been considered an extremely serious offence and usually involves a very long custodial sentence on convictionso that it undoubtedly and without the slightest ambiguity falls into that category of a serious offencewill no longer be appropriate for jury trial. That is a very serious and damaging development. In the category of serious offences, there will be a two-tier system of justice, with some types of offence being tried in front of a juryas we have discovered this afternoon, we must worry about how long even that will last under this Government if they pursue their agendaand others being tried only by a judge, with no right to jury trial, thereby contradicting the Magna Carta principle. That is a two-tier system.
	In the light of what the Solicitor-General has said this afternoon, I am a great deal more worried about this issue than I was at midday, before the debate started. He seemed to say in support of his proposals that under his system, a judge could read a great deal of evidence, which would not therefore come out in front of the court. Of course, it is perfectly proper and desirable that when a judge is presiding over a jury trial, he does a lot of homework before the trial opens, simply from the point of view of managing the trial effectively. That is fineif the judge is not going to reach a verdict. However, the idea of a judge with responsibility for reaching a verdict reading before the trial begins material that will not be delivered in open court, and which cannot therefore be challenged by the defendant or his or her counsel, is deeply troubling. It is extremely subversive of the whole principle that evidence should be available to the court, and equally to the defence and prosecution, and that the defendants should, at every stage, have an opportunity to challenge any allegations made against them.

Mike O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman may find it useful to realise that there has long been a distinction between material that is used and is relevant to particular parts of a case, and unused material that is essentially background material that is not probative of a point at issue in the case. Also, some statements can be just read out in court and do not require cross-examination because they are accepted. There are various kinds of evidence and some of the unused material may be able to be read by the court if that is appropriate in all circumstances.

Quentin Davies: Well, the Solicitor-General has deepened my concerns. A statement made in court and unchallenged is taken to be accepted. If a defendant does not challenge some material evidence that is used against him, a juryor, indeed, the judgemay draw negative conclusions from that. But if a judge has read it in his chambers and nobody knows that he has read it, the defendant does not have the opportunity to challenge it. That could be very damaging. The prospect of a two-tier system of justicewith two different standards of evidence, and of challenging and sifting evidencewould no longer be theoretical, but actual. The Government have admitted as much this afternoon, and that is extraordinarily worrying.
	There is no conflict or trade-off between these points of principle and those of pragmatic consideration. When I consider the pragmatic points that have been raised this afternoon, I cannot see even the beginning of a case for eroding, attacking or degrading the essential principles. The Solicitor-General got into a frightful mess this afternoon because he conceded the point that the Government were not suggesting that juries were not capable of understanding the evidence in serious fraud cases and they were not introducing the Bill on that ground.
	I jotted down several remarks that the Solicitor-General made about juries in serious fraud cases, and no doubt others will be reported in  Hansard. He talked about juries' steep learning curve. If that is not patronising or disparaging of their ability to master the evidence, I do not know what is. He also talked about extremely complex and obtuse evidence, with the implication that it would be difficult for juries to understand. So he started by saying that he would not challenge juries' ability to master the evidence, and I can see why, politically, that would be a foolish approach. It would be very patronising of all the good people who take part in those trials and cast an unjustified aspersion on them, so he does not want to say that. However, he then proceeds to use phrases and epithets in the course of the debate that imply that he does have a lack of respect for juries' ability to cope in serious fraud trials. That is a contradiction in the Government's position.
	Much of the Government's supporting publicity material has been based on the assumption that juries cannot cope with such cases and, as a result, we have to change the basis of the law. The Solicitor-General also said that it had been the case in the past, and that under this regime the evidence had had to be simplified and fewer charges laid and that it was not possible to bring the full criminality involved to the attention of the courts. The implication is that juries cannot get their poor little heads around more than a small number of charges. In practice, the argument makes sense only on the assumptionwhich he explicitly rejectedthat the Solicitor-General does not believe that juries are capable of performing that role.

Kate Hoey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Quentin Davies: I shall give way to the hon. Lady with pleasure, although I had hoped that the Solicitor-General would challenge what I am saying. His lack of movement gives me comfort that I am not far wide of the mark.

Mike O'Brien: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Quentin Davies: Certainly, but first I must give way to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey).

Kate Hoey: I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am following his remarks and agreeing with them wholeheartedly. Does he agree with me that our confidence in the jury system stems precisely from the fact that members of the public see that juries are ordinary men and women like themselves? That helps to give people confidence in our legal justice system in general. Would not the sort of change being suggested today cause them to lose confidence in the system?

Quentin Davies: I am very grateful to the hon. Lady, and I agree with everything that she says. Before she entered the Chamber, I said that, apart from the Whip, the Minister and his Parliamentary Private Secretary, only two Labour Back Benchers had even listened to the debate, let alone taken part in it. Many people will read the  Hansard report of the debate and they will notice that two of the three Labour Back Benchers who have now spoken are clearly deeply sceptical about the fundamental principle underlying the Bill, and indeed appear to oppose it. It is significant that the majority of Labour Members who have bothered to come to the debate have formed a judgment against the Bill.

Mike O'Brien: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Quentin Davies: Of course.

Mike O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman invited me to intervene if I disagreed with him. For the record, I think that his criticisms were amply dealt with in my opening remarks. The Opposition have constantly put up a straw man in this debate, saying that the Bill is all about the Government's belief that juries are incompetent in understanding. That is not our positionwe believe that we need to consider the burden placed on ordinary members of the jury as a result of long fraud trials. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not care about that, but I think that Members of this House ought to.

Quentin Davies: The Solicitor-General has not dealt with the fears and suspicions that I have set out. On the contrary, it was his opening remarks that created them in the first place. He has talked about juries facing a steep learning curve and having difficulties with obtuse evidence. If such statements do not imply that juries find it difficult to understand the evidence, I do not know what they do imply, or whether they have any meaning in the English language.

David Jones: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Quentin Davies: I will give way in a second, after I have finished this point. Is the Solicitor-General trying to say that trials have been taking too long? Alternatively, is he claiming that it has been necessary for the prosecution to simplify indictments and not bring as many charges as would otherwise be the case, with the result that the full criminality of events alleged in the course of proceedings is not expressed? If so, that makes no sense unless the implication is that more complex indictments could be brought forward if juries were got rid of and, in turn, that makes no sense unless the concomitant implication is that judges are able to understand what juries cannot. My contention is that the only logical conclusion to be drawn from what the Solicitor-General has said is the one that I have set out.  [Interruption.] However, in the interests of justice, which I believe in, I shall give the hon. and learned Gentleman a brief right of reply, and then give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones).

Mike O'Brien: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as we are finally getting down to the real arguments in his speech. Does he agree that the present arrangements lead to trials being severed and to charges being omitted from indictments so that the full criminality involved is never exposed in court? Does he accept that defendants sometimes do not face proceedings because they are tail-end charlies and not central to the case in hand? Does he not find it objectionable in terms of justice that the full criminality of a case will not be exposed in a single trial?

Quentin Davies: No. This may be a technical point, but it is an important aspect of the law. The Solicitor-General raises some important, pragmatic considerations. Every week, prosecuting authorities, such as the SFO and the Crown Prosecution Service, and the counsel they appoint and brief, have to take important decisions about such matters. The Solicitor-General and I take a different view. I disagree with him completely. Justice does not require that the indictment be exhaustive; it does not require that every act that might be deemed contrary to the law, and therefore criminal, should be included in the indictment. I do not believe that at all.
	As elsewhere in human life, we have to concentrate on the essentials. Human timelike other resources such as moneyis not infinite. Whether the case is being heard by a judge or a jury, we do not want it to go on for a month of Sundays; we want to deal with the essential pointsthe essential criminalityand prosecute the egregious offences. If a guy has been convicted of a rape and a murder, it does not much matter if we forget about the fact that he has a few motoring offences on his record. Anyway, if there is a conviction on the major charge in a serious fraud case and other offences are taken into account, it barely affects the sentence. It would not affect the sentence at all if the other sentences were concurrent so there would be no practical effect. The idea that we can achieve platonic perfection in the law courts and expose all the criminality is wrong and futile. We cannot succeed and it is dangerous to try because we would muddle the justice system and make it much more difficult for peoplenot just juries or judges, but people outsideto understand the essentials of the incident that led to the prosecution.

David Jones: If, as the Solicitor-General suggests, the Government's only concern is to relieve juries of participation in lengthy trials, does my hon. Friend agree that there seems no reason to raise the question of complexity as a consideration for the judge? The only consideration should be the length of the trial; complexity should be irrelevant.

Quentin Davies: I agree. One should not try to anticipate precisely how long a trial will be before it starts. That would be contrary to the interests of justice. One might genuinely think that the matter could be resolved in a week or two, but issues might arise, or the defence might want to call additional witnesses, and it could take longer.
	That is not to say that trials should not be effectively managed. As I said earlier, there is a contradiction in the requirement on the judge to preside over the trial effectively and manage it properlywhich means that he has to read himself into the case in advance to assess what the main points are likely to beand giving him the obligation to reach a verdict. He can reach a verdict only on the basis of evidence that is made fully available to the defence, so that the defence has a full opportunity to challenge it during the trial. If the judge is reading material privately or in chambers before the trial starts, he cannot reach a verdict on that basis. There is a conflict of interest. This is a matter of principle, as I pointed out earlier, but it has important pragmatic considerations.
	I have dealt with the principle as clearly as I can, so I shall continue on pragmatism. When we consider the historical, empirical evidence, there is general agreement that the Jubilee line trial collapsed for reasons that were nothing to do with the jury; they were the first people to be taken aback by the fact that the trial had collapsed and expressed themselves quite clearly on that point, as they did about the patronising suggestion that it was something to do with them because they were unable to master the evidence. They had no opportunity to reach a verdict, so the collapse was nothing to do with them.
	The Solicitor-General mentioned several other well-known cases, such as Maxwell, Blue Arrow and, I think, Guinness 2. Those cases collapsed because of mistakes made by the prosecution, including sometimes the desire to over-prosecute and put too much into the indictmentjust to rub in the point I made when I dealt with the Solicitor-General's intervention. It is a mistake to over-charge. Indeed, I think that one pays lawyersone normally pays them very expensivelyfor their ability to identify the essentials of a case, not to waste time, and not to obfuscate but to clarify. So that is an indictment of the prosecution of these cases. Sometimes the trial judge simply loses control of the case, and that may well have been so with Jubilee line. In a way, we are treating the jury as a scapegoatan innocent sacrificial victimfor the failings of professional lawyers in the form of judges or of prosecuting counsel. That is quite a serious injustice in itself and should make us think.
	The final piece of pragmatic evidence and consideration that I want to bring forward has already been mentioned in passing by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), anticipating me slightly. We should look at the American experience, because the Americans have been extremely successful in getting convictions in very complex fraud trials. They do not get more complex than Enron or WorldCom.
	Enron's was a scam involving a very complex series of off-balance-sheet accounting mechanisms, which were effectively disguised. I suppose they were disguised from the auditors, but I think that the extent to which the auditors were criminally negligent or not is still a matter of sub judice, so I had better not comment on that, even though we are talking about an American jurisdictionand frankly I do not know, which is the real reason why I do not comment. But it is extraordinary and amazing that the auditors did not pick it up; I happily say that on the record. Certainly, all those highly paid Wall street analystsvery few earn less than $500,000 a year, and most earn more than $1 millionwho were covering Enron did not pick it up. So it was a very clever fraud. It went on for a long time, and we know that it was very damaging.
	That case was complex and it was dealt with by a jury trial. The prosecuting authorities did succeed in getting some plea bargains with the lesser criminals, but the main convictions against Skilling and Lay, the chief executive and the president of the company, were secured against not guilty pleas before a jury. That is a very good test and the system worked very well. The Americans have put inside a whole series of very serious, very sophisticated financial fraudsters; one thinks of Levene, Boesky and Milken, and they do not come bigger or more complex than that. We must take account of the American experience.
	Looking at this as a matter of principle, unless Members on the Labour Benches have a totally different view of the merits and the virtues of our constitution and the legal systemwhich I do not believe, because I like to think that we all share some of the same cultural, historical values of our country across the ChamberI cannot see the beginnings of a case for making an attack on the jury system, even this limited attack, let alone any further attack that might be made. It was suggested several times this afternoon that there is a danger that if this wedge goes through, we shall find that a whole new category of criminal trials is excluded from jury trial in the future, perhaps in the Government's next fraud Bill or criminal justice Bill.
	It seems to me to be a matter of principle that no case has been made to make these changes and, pragmatically, we do not have a trade-off. We do not have positive pragmatic arguments working against the principle. We have a clear series of experiences, in this country and in the United States, which weigh very much in favour of keeping the status quo.
	In my opinion the Government's proposals are incredibly misconceived. I am deeply saddened that practically no one from the Labour party has been in the Chamberjust three Back Benchersand Labour Members will all troop in, without hearing the arguments, and vote the way that the Whips tell them on this matter, which has been brought forward with the greatest degree of levity and lightness of concern for some very deep and important principles.
	I do not always speak in a very friendly way of what I often call the nominated Chamber in this legislature, but it will have the role of picking up where we have failed. I just hope, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said, that the other House will ensure that it looks very carefully at the real arguments before it makes a fundamental change in a foundational principle of our liberties.

Bob Spink: I am one of the few non-legal minds contributing to the debate, so it could be said that I speak for the jury side of the equation, and for the common man, or the uninitiated. I rely simply on common sense. Trial by jury is a matter of fundamental principle that defines our national character and traditions of fairness.
	My story starts at Runnymede in 1215, when King John, who was about as popular then as the Prime Minister is now, was forced to adopt the Magna Carta, which became the keystone of what I believe is our constitution. Over the years, it has underpinned many legislatures around the world. It has helped to seed good governance and fair and transparent justice, and to prevent corruption in judicial systems.
	Even today, countries such as Iran can benefit from its guidance, at a time when the Prime Minister is trying to destroy it in this country. The Magna Carta is more than just history: it is alive and well today. It has led the world in developing principles of fair play and freedom, and getting right the balance of power and control between the state and the individual. It is also about ending the tyranny of the too often brutal power that the state sometimes exercises over its people. Now is no time to be dismantling such protection.
	Perhaps the most important provision of the Magna Carta was that it codified the existing and long-standing practices of trial by jury. Under habeas corpus, no person may be imprisoned or have his property confiscated without prior trial by his equals. That is a vital feature of the story of democratic development because it represents the first time that the authority of the state was ever specifically limited. It was the first step on the long road to what became universal enfranchisement.
	The principle of trial by jury of one's peers, which was established in Magna Carta, was consolidated by the William and Mary declaration of rights of 1689. It continued the encoding of our constitution and the fundamental protections of the individual against the not unknown possibility of an overbearing state. The 1689 declaration stated:
	That Jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned.
	That is as relevant today to us as the American declaration of independence is to the American people. It is not some old archaic curiosity. I accept that it may sometimes appear attractive to dispense with inconvenient rights and principles that seem, on sloppy analysis, to stand in the way, but when those rights have been won through blood, sweat and tears over 850 years of history, and when they underpin our very freedoms, we dump them at our peril.
	The Government do not seem to have in their heart a love or even a respect for our history and traditions. I sometimes doubt whether they value at all the fight led over centuries by this mother of Parliaments for freedom and human rights around the world. For the Prime Minister to start to destroy trial by jury, and drive home the thin end of what I will argue is a destructive wedge, would be an act of historic folly. That is not just incompetence or unknowing tort, but an act of vandalismand for what purpose? What possible prize is to be won by that? How cheaply will the Government cast aside our historic freedoms? Incredibly, they will do so, they assert, simply to get easier, quicker or more certain convictions in a few serious fraud cases. Fraud is a property crime, which does not compare to crimes of violence, the abuse of children or terrorism. That only adds insult to the injury of this House, which has fought long and hard over centuries to win and then to protect the rights of the individual, of which trial by jury is one of the most important.
	Having set out the historic backdrop, let me turn to the contemporary and pragmatic arguments. The Bill is particularly invidious when we consider the existence of much better solutions to the problem of long and complex fraud trials. There is no evidence that juries prolong trials or that jurors are incapable of following the evidence in a fraud trial any more than in any other class of trial. Jurors have generally done a good job over hundreds of years and thousands of trials. They have secured and maintained high levels of public confidence in the judicial system.
	A panel of 12 independent members of the public has generally managed to grasp the essential issues of innocence or guilt, even when the legal issues are complex. The lawyers can argue the legal machinations. If they make the effort, they can put the issues across coherently to a jury. That is important in itself, to ensure that justice can be seen to be done by ordinary people, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) explained to the House. Barristers are clever and decent peoplewe all know that, because the House is full of them.
	Fraud trials are special in that they often pivot on the question of whether the defendant has acted dishonestly. The technical legal test for dishonesty centres on what an ordinary citizen perceives to be dishonest. It is not just an optional extra in fraud to have ordinary citizens sitting in judgment. It is absolutely essential that ordinary, independent people decide on the matter of dishonesty in fraud cases. Judges have a sophisticated and intimate knowledge of the process of law, but, with respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) who spoke earlier, that necessary strength in a judge may get in the way of the more detached, ordinary and independent insight of a group of 12 fair-minded members of the public applying their experience and common sense in a collective manner to the issues that they are considering. The jury sees the issues from a totally different perspective from that of the judge. Neither perspective is better than the other. My contention is that both perspectives are essential, valuable and indispensable parts of the whole system.
	It is not obvious why the Government have resurrected this ill-considered measure. A number of my colleagues have speculated on why they might have done so. It is not obvious, because there is no public demand for it. People do not stay late at the Hoy and Helmet pub in Benfleet to argue the case for the Bill to be brought forward.
	One of the benefits of jury trials is that they underpin the renowned incorruptibility of judges, which relies, at least in part, on the checks and balances of the jury system, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) pointed out earlier. There would be significant procedural and safety issues, because judges see and hear evidence and submissions during a trial that are rightly kept from juries because they might improperly influence their verdict. I am thinking, for instance, of previous records and items that are ruled inadmissible. Just how that is to be handled has not been explained at all by those on the Government Front Bench.
	We are told that the measure would affect only 10 or 20 out of tens of thousands of jury trials. However, those few trials each year could well be the thin end of the wedge. Experience has taught us to distrust the Government, so their indication that the measure is just for serious fraud is pretty worthless. Trial without jury could be expanded to other types of crime. For instance, terrorist trials can be extraordinarily complex and lengthythe stated problems that engendered the Billbut the international consequences of terrorist trials without jury may be unhelpful in retaining the moral high ground and in securing hearts and minds in the battle for international and national security. Some would argue that corporate manslaughter demands specialist knowledge from jurors. We can also add to the list serious organised crime, corruption and conspiracy. The way in which the Bill is drafted suggests that its scope is intended to go much wider than a few serious fraud cases. A future Government, under pressure from hard cases, might find it irresistible to bring other types of crime into the provisions for trial without jury. We all know the axiom: hard cases make bad law.
	I do not accept that there is a unique problem with fraud trials. The Attorney-General told Parliament that fraud conviction rates were 70 per cent., compared with a general conviction rate of 75 per cent.although the Solicitor-General pointed out earlier that in a restricted survey, he found that the conviction rate for serious fraud was 61 per cent. However, even that is a much better conviction rate than the miserable rates for some cases of rape or child abuse, so will the Solicitor-General be arguing that we abolish juries for those trials?
	If there is a serious problem with a few fraud cases each year, we could tackle it without destroying one of the key tenets of good governance and justice. The Crown Prosecution Service could manage cases better and set them out more effectively. It could present fewer and clearer issues that could be more quickly and easily explained and supported by evidence. We could hold a trial of specimen counts before a jury and put remaining counts to a judge alone to make cases more manageable.
	I do not subscribe to the Government's implied stupid jury argument. Nevertheless, we could get more professional people on to juries by tightening up the jury exemption rules that some people use to avoid their public duty. We could give better support to juries during the process, without removing their duty to decide the matters in front of them. Many of those points were covered very well by the Wooler report. The Bill will create the concept of a first and second-class justice system, with white-collar crime treated differently from blue-collar crime. That will carry enormous risks for the justice system and would be likely to undermine public confidence.
	The Bill will move trials to the High Court instead of the Crown court. Sadly, I depart from our Front-Bench policy on this, although no doubt my Front-Bench colleagues will disabuse me of my thoughts later. I do not think that it is necessarily a good idea to put serious fraud into the civil rather than the criminal jurisdiction. That would
	compound the concern that the removal of a jury is likely to make serious fraud appear a regulatory rather than criminal affair.
	That is a quote from Liberty, which promotes civil liberties and human rights.
	The Solicitor-General seemed to contradict his own arguments at the start of the debate. He said that he thought that juries could not understand complex and long cases, but he also saidI quote himthat stupid juries are not a reason for the Bill. He said that over-long trials were a key reason for the Bill, but he also said that he had no plans at present to employ trials without jury in other equally long cases. His presentation was riddled with anomalies and contradictions.

Mike O'Brien: It is important that we do not misrepresent people in the House. The hon. Gentleman is quoting selectively. When I used the words stupid jury, I was quoting a Conservative Member who had used the phrase, so that I could dismiss the point. It was not worthy of the hon. Gentleman to attribute those words as a comment that I had made. On reflection, I am sure that he will wish that he had not tried to use such phrases to misrepresent me.

Bob Spink: The Solicitor-General is absolutely right that he was quoting someone else when he used the phrase. However, I did not attribute the phrase to him, but simply said that he had used the phrase. I think that the record will show that. The record will also show that underlying his opening speech was the thesis that juries could not understand the issues in front of them. He said that on several occasions, and both the Liberal and Conservative Front-Bench spokesmen have made that point before.
	The Government seem to be hellbent on pushing through the measure, even though it has previously been heavily opposed in both Houses. I voted against it then, as I will now. I suspect that the Government plan to use the Parliament Act to force through the Bill, because it will not go easily through the other place this time either. Ironically, such a draconian and authoritarian act would of itself be an act of vandalism against the parliamentary procedures that we enjoy.
	The main clause in the Bill simply removes the order-making powers in section 330 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We will thus have little opportunity to improve the Bill by amendment, so it must be voted down today on Second Reading.
	The Prime Minister said that he thought the criminal justice system an outdated relic of the 19th century in urgent need of reform. This is the third attack in recent years by this Government on the criminal justice system and on our civil rights. I say that this is a matter of protecting our precious constitution, our human rights and freedoms, and our influence for good in a troubled world. It would be vandalism to bulldoze this Bill through Parliament without the specific will of the English people, but that is how the Government now do their business. The people know that, and they want to change that.
	On this, as on other key issues, the Prime Minister is simply wrong. He is proposing an act of historic folly. He should look elsewhere for his elusive legacy. The criminal justice system is now fair, transparent and publicly accountable through the use of trial by jury, and that is how it must stay.

David Jones: I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests.
	It is a privilege to be called to speak in opposition to this odious Bill and to follow so many fine speakers, every word of whose speeches I agree with, except for one remark. That was the comment by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) that only English Members were present in the Chamber, and that it was a certain sense of Englishness that gave rise to disgust at this appalling measure. I can assure him that such a sense is prevalent throughout Wales, and that Wales has enjoyed the same adherence to liberty as the English since 1536, when a Welsh monarch annexed England as part of greater Wales.

Douglas Hogg: We should keep it in mind that the Bill also extends to Northern Ireland.

David Jones: It does indeed. My right hon. and learned Friend is quite right. I have no doubt that the adherence to liberty is also reflected among Irish Members, although unfortunately I cannot see any present in the Chamber today.
	For more than 800 years the right to a trial by jury has been one of the cornerstones of liberty in this country and this conjoined jurisdiction of England and Wales. The crucial importance of the jury system cannot be overstated. It tempers a potentially oppressive prosecution, and the occasional phenomenon, which is not unknown, of the case-hardened judge, by the application of the common sense and breadth of experience frequently provided by 12 ordinary men and women of diverse backgrounds.
	The jury system has an important role in encouraging and binding a developed civic society by ensuring that people from all walks of lifeyoung, old, men, women and people of diverse ethnic backgroundscontribute to and play their visible part in the administration of our legal system. In that respect, it may fairly be arguedindeed, it was argued by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhillsthat the jury system plays a fundamental part in our democracy.
	My hon. Friend quoted from Devlin's well-known work, Trial by Jury, in which he refers to every jury being a little parliament. Devlin deserves to be quoted further, because he went on to say:
	The first object of any tyrant in Whitehall would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will and the next to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for no tyrant could afford to leave a subject's freedom in the hands of 12 of his countrymen.
	Devlin also said that the jury was
	the lamp that shows that freedom lives.
	We therefore undermine the right to a jury trial at our greatest peril. By doing so we are undermining the very democracy that should be the bulwark of this country.
	As other Members have pointed out, the Government have made repeated attempts to reduce the circumstances in which trial by jury is available. They have presented to Parliament two mode of trial Bills, whose purpose was to eliminate the right of the accused to elect for trial by jury in either-way offences. In the face of robust opposition, principally in the other place, both Bills were defeated.
	It is interesting to noteas was pointed out, I think, by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews)that having attempted and failed to attack the jury system by approaching the less serious cases, the Government have now changed tack and seek, through an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 in this Bill, to remove the right to trial by jury in the more serious cases. It is clear that now that the Government have failed at one end of the criminal spectrum, they are seeking to undermine the jury system by attrition, from the other end, by starting with the more serious cases. Like many other Conservative Members, I firmly believe that the right to jury trial is such a fundamental right that any attempt to erode it should be strongly resisted. If we do not resist that attempt, it will send us down the slippery path towards being deprived of our democracy.
	The ostensible reasons behind the proposal have already been analysed to some extent, but they deserve further scrutiny. We are told that the removal of the right to jury trial would occur only if a High Court judge was satisfied that the complexity or length of the trial was likely to make the trial
	so burdensome to the members of a jury ... that the interests of justice require that serious consideration should be given to the question of whether the trial should be conducted without a jury.
	The question of what is burdensome immediately arises.
	The Solicitor-General has said that the Government's approach is to relieve jurors from the burden of participating in long criminal trials, but that is a dangerous path to take. Many jurors regard serving on a jury not as a civic duty but a civic privilege, and we heard my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) speak on the subject. For centuries, citizens have regarded it a part of their duty to sit on juries, if called to do so, and give a fair hearing to their fellow citizens when they are charged with an offence.
	On the issue of complexity, the Solicitor-General suggested that he was not advancing the stupid jury argument, but it is hard to see what other construction can be put on the word complexity. Presumably, it is intended to suggest that some cases are so difficult that it is likely that jury members will lack the power of concentration or the intellectual capacity to deal with them. That is an arrogant and patronising attitude, and it is offensive not only to juries but to every citizen of this country who may be called on to serve on one. It is clear that the Government do not trust their own citizens to have sufficient mental capacity or powers of concentration to focus on the issues that may be dealt with in serious fraud trials.
	Juries consist of people from all walks of life and backgrounds, and they comprise university dons and dustmen. However, it is the collective wisdom of the jury that prevails, and that collective wisdom may frequently be equal to, if not greater than, the wisdom of those who present the case in court. It is patronising in the extreme to suggest that juries are incapable of understanding the issues in a complex fraud trial, as was pointed out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). At the heart of all serious fraud cases is the issue of dishonesty, and it has been demonstrated amply, over many years, that jurors are more than capable of deciding whether an individual is honest or dishonest. Furthermore, to second-guess the intellectual capacity of a jury is to second-guess the intellectual capacity of the country at large. That ought not to be countenanced, and we ought not to go along with it.
	Previous speakers have used the words slippery slope and thin end of the wedge, and they were absolutely right to do so. Today, we are considering whether a fundamental building block of our national democracy should be removedthe issue is as serious as that. I am glad that the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) has re-entered the Chamber, because I found it offensive when he referred to the proposal as a case management issue. It is not that; it goes to the very heart of our democracy and our liberty. If that is the attitude of Labour Members, it shows the contempt with which they regard the British people. This is an odious, reprehensible Bill. I will oppose it, as will other Conservative Members, and I hope that it will be savaged in another place.

Andrew Pelling: I listened carefully to the reasons given by the Solicitor-General and his hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) for introducing the Bill again.
	The issue is not the lack of jury capability, neither is it the length of cases brought before court; otherwise, the Bill would include a general proposal about the prospective length of cases other than fraud. The Solicitor-General said that more than 60 per cent. of cases taken to court result in a successful prosecution, so the Bill was not introduced to tackle a failure to prosecute fraud successfully. He referred to the desire that cases be dealt with expeditiously, and he emphasisedthis appears to be the Government's main argumentthat the burden on the jury is the primary issue and reason for introducing the Bill. It is for the House to consider whether the burden on jurors is such that we wish to give up the rights of Her Majesty's subjects to trial by their peers. The argument, bearing in mind my colleagues' strong comments throughout our debate, is that the burden on 12 members drawn from the electorate in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is such that we should give up those rights.
	Abolition appears to be an expedient solution, and some hon. Members asked whether it would set a precedent. The Solicitor-General said that there were no plans for treating it as a precedent for further legislation to withdraw the right to jury trial, but I would be more reassured if he had said that there was no intention to introduce such a change in future. I was particularly disturbed by references to Diplock courts.

Mike O'Brien: rose

Andrew Pelling: I hope that I have not antagonised the Solicitor-General.

Mike O'Brien: There is no intention.

Andrew Pelling: That is helpful, but it might have been better if that comment had been made earlier.
	Many cases that have been heard under the judicial system are as complicated as fraud cases, and ordinary members of the public are able to make a judgment about the dishonesty of people charged with a certain type of fraud. We heard from Members with experience of the legal profession that it is not the fraud itself that is the problem but whether the individuals on trial are at the heart of case. I do not take offence at the suggestion from the hon. Member for Wirral, West about good court management, but the effective management of court cases is more likely to reduce the burden on juries than the proposals in the Bill are.
	We heard about pressure on judges, who would become the primary purveyors of justice in fraud cases. No doubt only a limited number of judges would have the specialist knowledge to consider such cases, and if they are to try cases on their own, we must be concerned about moving to a continental system where judges are more exposed to pressures from the criminal community.
	We have heard only two speeches in favour of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) spoke about the casual way in which such so-called legislative reform is introduced in the House. It must be disturbing to those in the Public Gallery to have heard so many speeches against the Bill, yet to know the House is so weak that the Bill will nevertheless be progressed through its Second Reading on a three-line Whip. Is the argument important to the Solicitor-General, or, given the ability of the other place to vote down the Bill, will he ensure that the Parliament Act is used so that the opposing voices in both Houses are ignored?

David Burrowes: I declare an interest as a practising criminal solicitor. Indeed, my firm has been a member of the serious fraud panel. With that interest and understanding, I shall make some preliminary comments.
	I was involved in one of the most substantial fraud cases. It went on for some 10 years before it reached court, continued for a further 12 months before the jury was involved, and eventually collapsed as a result of legal argument. That illustrates the possible complexity and extreme length of fraud cases and the fact that the jury may not be involved in the problems inherent in such serious and complex cases.
	I declare a particular interest, having been summonsed to do jury service. Despite some protestations, I must do my duty, and properly so, at the central criminal court next year. I shall put to the test the stupid juror theory to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) referred. Perhaps on Report I shall be able to report back on whether my fellow jurors and I pass that test. The view, implicit in the Government's case, that jurors are stupid is improper and patronising.
	Parliament has a fundamental interest in the argument. As my hon. Friends have noted, Sir Patrick Devlin pointed out that each jury is a little parliament. Parliament and juries are mutually dependent for their strength. The scant interest in the Bill shown by those on the Government Benches is indicative of the Government's approach. Some may say that is because the issue has been discussed before and this is the third or possibly the fifth round.
	However, the Bill is of fundamental importance, and the lack of interest among Government Members may indicate their subservience to the Government. Devlin highlighted the concern that the first act of a tyrant, however well-intentioned, leads to the subservience of a Parliament and the second act diminishes and extinguishes juries. On the Opposition Benches, there is no such subservience. We will challenge the Bill and look to the other place to do likewise and stand in the way of the Government. It is in the interests of lawyers, jurors, and the stateindeed, of everybodyto seek to secure successful prosecutions. The jury system is a cornerstone of our democracy and, importantly, commands a high level of public confidence.
	As Sir Patrick Devlin said, we should recognise that the jury ensures that Englishmenand, in deference to my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) to Welshmen, and those in Northern Irelandget the justice they like, not the sort that the Government think is good for them. At the root of the Bill is the Government's belief that they have a monopoly on defining what is justice, and they are seeking to impose that through the Bill. We want to ensure that that choice should continue to be with the people, through their participation by way of the jury.
	I shall try to be as charitable to the Government as possible. They have referred to the stresses, strains and burdens involved in the jury system. However, everyone recognises the value of the principle of judgment by his or her peers, so is there good reason to sacrifice it in cases of serious fraud?
	I was in practice, and I can recognise the problem, as we all can. Too many cases of serious fraud are not successfully prosecuted, and the length of time taken to deal with those that are investigated and prosecuted is a matter of great concern and must be dealt with properly. However, in justifying their restrictions on jury trials, the Government go from one argument to another. We heard about the length and complexity of cases, as well as the inadequacy of juries. We might not use the words of the Solicitor-General, who referred to the stupid juror test, but the implication is that they are unable to cope. His final argument was that it is necessary to address the full criminality of the case.
	Has the Solicitor-General made the case for sacrificing the important principle of the jury on the basis of length and complexity? I do not agree that juries cause the length of cases.

Mike O'Brien: My point was not that the jury caused any lengthening of cases, but that in order to ensure that cases could be put before a jury it was necessary, as Lord Justice McKinnon said, for the courts to manage the process. They did so by severing cases, by reducing the number of charges, and sometimes by not prosecuting all those potentially involved.

David Burrowes: I am grateful for that clarification.
	The Solicitor-General alluded to the Jubilee line case. We must give proper weight to the report by the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, who would seem to be in a good position to be able to make recommendations. The report said that no responsibility for the inconclusive outcome of that case can properly be attributed to the capabilities or conduct of the jury. We should attach great weight to that, as it suggests that there are other ways to deal with the problem.

Mike O'Brien: The inspector, Stephen Wooler, also made it clear that there was no reason to believe that section 43 would necessarily apply in the case of the Jubilee line. Therefore, even if this Bill were passed, a case such as the Jubilee line case might be heard before a jury in any event.

David Burrowes: That point has also been made by other hon. Members. Nevertheless, it has been part of the Solicitor-General's argument that cases such as the Jubilee line and Blue Arrow have caused many problems. In Her Majesty's chief inspector's suggestions on what to do about those burdens, he was talking not only about the Jubilee line case but about the problem that some trials are of substantial length. He said that such cases did not need to be taken away from a jury; rather, they needed a proper structure and support, and they needed to be planned effectively to minimise the disruption for jurors and to provide authoritative assistance. That needs to happen, and I would be interested to find out what progress has been made in that regard, and also what steps have been taken that have not worked, that justify taking this extra step of sacrificing the principle of trial by jury. I should be happy to give way to the Solicitor-General if he can tell me what steps have been taken as a result of those suggestions to avoid the situation that we find ourselves in now.
	If we are to make this sacrifice, it is important to recognise that there would be a limited number of cases involved. Of the 40,000 or so cases going to the Crown court, we are talking about 20 or so cases, and about six this year. Indeed, in four years, only 26 cases have lasted more than six months. That puts this matter in perspective, if the Government are using those cases as a justification for going down this route.
	Case management is highly relevant to this issue. The criminal procedure rules were introduced at the end of March for quite proper reasons, in order to streamline cases, to make interviews more succinct and to ensure that the length of trials could be reduced wherever possible. But where is the evidence that any of the six cases this year has not been properly streamlined and reduced in length? Must we still go a large step further and seek to undermine the principle of trial by jury?
	The Government's next justification for sacrificing that principle is that of complexity. By implication, that justification casts aspersions on the members of the jurymy fellow jurors, if I were asked to serve on a jury in a fraud trial. I should have to see whether I could get that length of time off to do so, but no doubt that would be the case. Would we, the jury, be able to cope with the complexity? That is the essential question for jurors. It is plainly patronising to question a jury's ability to cope, and there is little evidence that they could not do so. It is a matter of conjecture, and I am worried that that argument is being used to justify taking such a serious step.
	The Government advance an argument about the prosecution being able to establish full criminality. The Solicitor-General has made the point about paring down charges and wanting to prove them. However, the fundamental issue is that justice must be seen to be done. The public are explicitly involved in that process by being members of a jury. A trial is not there just for the lawyers, for the defendants, for the victims or for the judge. It is not there for the state. It is there for the public, and for this country. It is there to provide an understanding of the conviction and the sentence, which is guaranteed by having a jury. We will not all go into the courtroom to listen to what is reported there, but the presence of the jury ensures that the public participate in the important judgment that is made.
	Why is fraud getting such special treatment? Why cannot the Government give careful consideration to how to deal with the burdens of full criminality? Why do they not consider the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004the protocols of which are being implemented, as I was informed in a note only todaywhich allows the judge alone to consider similar charges after the defendant has been convicted on a sample count? Why do the Government not consider the effect of that, rather than rushing, as they seem to be doing, to throw away the jury? That leads many of us to suspect that they are not willing to consider the case management rules from last year, or the effects of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act, but are seeking to abolish jury trial as a point of principle.
	Others have drawn attention to a concern that Blackstone put much more authoritatively and succinctly than I could:
	these inroads on the sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.
	I invite the Solicitor-General to consider that point.
	Let us deal in isolation with the Solicitor-General's case on full criminality. Why cannot we apply the same principle of wanting to establish full criminality to other cases, such as health and safety cases? The Solicitor-General said that the RCPO might want to deal with financial implications of drugs cases as an adjunct. Where will that lead? Perhaps drugs cases, in which prosecutors must decide which of several defendants and counts to go for, will have that principle applied to them. Why should not we sacrifice the principle of the jury system in relation to terrorist cases, in which it might not be possible to expose full criminality without a complex, lengthy trial? Sadly, if the argument were applied consistently, that would be the case, and it is feared that that will happen.
	The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan), justified the steps to be taken by saying that a double standard in relation to easy-to-prosecute petty frauds and unprosecutable major frauds was unacceptable. Are not double standards, with two different trial systems for criminal cases, exactly what the Bill suggests? A distinction is being made between white-collar crime and other crimes. Are not double standards inherent in the Bill? Rather than referring to unprosecutable cases, should not we be dealing with prosecutions?
	To go a stage further, slightly away from the Bill but still on the subject of fraud, is it not the case that many minor frauds are not even investigated? Is not the double standard illustrated by the fact that one cannot get insurance companies or the police to investigate credit card frauds costing individuals millions? In terms of wanting to deal effectively with fraud, that is where the double standard is, not in the major frauds. The problem of trying to secure a successful prosecution is not dealt with by removing the jury. Instead, we should try to improve prosecutions.
	The Solicitor-General cited magistrates courts as a defence for judge-only decision making, but the core of the magistrates court, as I know it from being there year in, year out, is the lay magistracy. It is the beacon of magistrates. The Government have sought to diminish and limit its role, but it is part and parcel of the magistrates court and of the public participation that is itself part and parcel of the criminal justice system.
	The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) is right. The Government do indeed have formconsiderable formin relation to removing the opportunity to opt for a jury trial. Form exists in the attempt to remove that opportunity in minor cases, but also in the attempt to prevent defendants themselves from opting for jury trial. That is of great concern to us all.
	As Members in all parts to the House have recognised, burdens are involved in dealing with serious and complicated fraud, but surely that is a price worth paying. Blackstone and others have referred to the price worth paying for justice. Surely we as a Parliament, given our dependence on the jury as a little parliament, should recognise and respect its fundamental importance to Parliament and to the country.
	Tonight, as on other occasions, we must be a jury deciding on the Solicitor-General's case. Has the case been made for doing away with jury trial in limited circumstances? It is certainly not clear, and I would say there is no case to answer. We shall have an opportunity to vote, but given the case made by the Solicitor-General, I think it should be thrown out.

David Heath: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes). Towards the end of his speech, he referred to the imbalance between cases involving minor offences, which are often not prosecuted and with which I think the criminal justice system fails to deal adequately, and major cases, which are often brought to court but then badly prosecuted. That is indeed a difficulty.
	There is a dreary inevitability about the debate. As many speakers have observed, we have been here before. Introducing the debate, the Solicitor-General referred light-heartedly to a repertory company. If we are a repertory company, it is simply because we share the view that there are basic freedoms in this country that we must defend, and jury trial is one of them. It is a monotony, but an inevitable and necessary monotony, that we must be here on so many occasions to respond to the Government in such a way.
	As others have said, there is a history to this. The Government are multiple recidivists, chipping away at the jury system as one of their many attacks on traditional British freedoms. It is possible to wax grandiloquent on these matters, and some Members have done precisely that this afternoon. I do not blame them: there is a temptation to quote the great charter, and to say that this is the fount of our freedoms and something that matters intensely.

Humfrey Malins: It is true.

David Heath: It is true. At the same time, however, there is a perfectly rational case to be made that does not have to be made in those terms. This is something worth preserving because it is an inherent part of the Britishthe English and Welshcriminal justice system, and something that we hold dear.
	I have heard not a word of evidence from the Solicitor-General to prove that the position has changed since we last debated jury trial. I have heard nothing to suggest that experience in the courts requires a change that we blocked in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 because we were so convinced that it was an adverse changeand we received assurances then that it would not proceed without affirmative resolution in both Houses. Indeed, I would say quite the reverse.
	When we consider the statutory changes that have been put in place, the protocols that have been brought in on the management of cases, the changes effected by means of the Fraud Act 2006, which received Royal Assent only very recently, and the fact that a fraud review is in place and is due to report soon, the only conclusion that we can draw is that there is one reason and one reason only why the Government are bringing forward this Bill now. By bringing it forward now and having it rejected by another place, they can bring it back again and use the Parliament Act to push it through, because they know perfectly well that the majority in another place, and a substantial minority in this House, will not stand for it. As they are determined to push it through and they do not have the arguments to support their case, that is the mechanism that they have chosen to use.
	I have still not heard any adequate arguments about why what is good for the United States is not good for us. The US prosecutes many more serious frauds than we do, and it does so successfully and is often proposed as a model of how to prosecute white-collar fraud effectively in the rhetoric of Ministers in our country. I have still not heard an adequate reason why the Americans can manage perfectly well with a jury system and we apparently cannotwhy a jury in Texas can do what a jury in London apparently cannot.

Stephen Hesford: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was present when my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) made the point that the Americans have a substantially different system from us in terms of plea bargaining. One of the reasons why they get through such cases more efficiently than us is that they have a very clear set of rules on plea bargaining.

David Heath: That is an interesting observation, but the Bill before us today is not called the Plea Bargaining Bill; it is the Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill. The Government have concluded that if it is difficult to manage a case, the jury should be got rid of as that is the obstacle. But there is no evidence to support the view that it is the jury that is the obstacle.
	It has been said that the intention behind the Bill is to secure more convictions. I listened carefully to the earlier comments of the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) and it very much sounded as if he was saying that one of the advantages of the Bill is that we would secure more convictions.

Stephen Hesford: indicated assent.

David Heath: The hon. Gentleman is nodding that that is the case. I find it alarming that a person who is a lawyeran officer of the Supreme Courtbelieves that by transferring responsibility for the determination of fact from a jury to a judge more convictions will be secured, when the only change is that the determination of fact is by a person employed by the state rather than 12 free men and women of this country. That is to misunderstand our legal system in a way that I find alarming in a trained lawyer. As a layman, I understand the distinction here, and I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman would as well.
	There has been constant reference to the complexity of serious fraud. We know that serious fraud is complex; it is of necessity complex. It is the job of prosecuting counsel to lay out those complex matters in a way that is intelligible to the court, and if they are not doing so, they are failing. If the argument is that the case is so complex that it cannot be produced in court at all and can only be handled by a judge in pre-trial proceedings reading through the supporting paperwork and coming to conclusions, we will have a more fundamental change to our legal system than we even suspect from the contents of the Bill.
	If, however, we are simply saying, Yes, these are complex matters and they will take a certain amount of time, then let us implement some of the procedural changes that we have already put in place. Let us see parts of Bills that we have debated at length in this House put into effect; I am thinking about the multiple count provision in previous legislation over which some of us agonised, only to find, to our horror, that that important issue is left on the shelf for years although it was considered to be a matter of great urgency. Let us see the management of the case deal with the presentation effectively. But, let us not take out the crucial element of British justicethe juryin deciding how to deal with such matters.
	On the question of the length of cases, I come back to case management. I do not believe that it is necessary for summing-up speeches to take 50, 60, 70, 80 or even more than 100 days. I am sorry, but I do not accept that that is good presentation of, or good management of, a case, and it does not happen in the United States. The hon. Member for Wirral, West said that that was all down to plea-bargaining, but it is not; it is also about case management. I cannot remember the exact number of days that the Enron case took, but I think it was about 50 in total. That would not happen in this country. A similar case would not be heard in that time. That is the difference between the management of cases in the US and here. Let the British Government look at how cases can be presented better and more effectively in court, instead of removing the people who are the determiners of fact.
	Then there is the extraordinary argument, to which I drew attention in an intervention, that because only a limited number of people can be available for the time required, juries become unrepresentative, and a court's representative nature is somehow improved by having the facts decided by one judge, rather than by 12 people drawn at random from the community. That is an absurd argument, and I hope that the Solicitor-General will not advance it again.
	There is also the argument about the full criminality of cases not being displayed. I have mentioned the multiple count legislation, which is already on the statute book. Those hon. and learned Gentlemen who speak with the authority of having acted in a criminal court know perfectly well that it is very rare for the full criminality of a multiple offender to be displayed to the court, because a prosecutor chooses what they will present before the court and what will secure the appropriate penalty. It is a complete red herring on the part of the Solicitor-General to suggest that the only way that justice can be secured is by putting before a court every single count of criminality that could be adduced to it in order to provide complexity, when complexity is actually unnecessary in securing an adequate conviction.
	I was in the room with the Home Secretary of the daythe right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett)as was the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), when we were promised that we would have proper debate, discussions and consultations between the parties on this very important matter. We were not given that. The Attorney-General asked a few of his chums in the other place round for a seminar, and we were told later, By the way, that was the consultation that you were promised. Our Front Benchers responsible for this issue were never invited to that seminar, or even advised that it was happening. That was the consultation between the parties that was supposed to have happened, at which we were supposed to have looked for alternatives to the removal of jury trial. We were not convinced that there would be a result, but we were happy to engage in such a conversation.
	We are left to conclude that the only reason why the Bill is before us today is that the Government are determined to chip away at the principle of jury trial. They have done it once, twice, three timeshowever many timesand they will continue to do so. I am sure that the Solicitor-General is giving his assurances on best advice and with the best of intentions that nothing further is planned. I am sorry to say, however, that nobody on the Opposition Benchesand not many on the Labour Benchesbelieves for a moment that, if the Bill is enacted through the use of the Parliament Act, there will not be a return raid yet again to remove elements of our judicial system. The Home Secretary said that the idea that justice is done before a court is an old-fashioned one. Those are the most chilling words that I have ever heard a Home Secretary say. I believe that justice is done in British courts before a British court with a British jury, and I am certainly prepared to defend that.

Damian Green: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Many hon. Members will be concerned by reports of violent disturbances at the Harmondsworth immigration detention centre in west London, where every wing has been set on fire. Has the Home Secretary given any indication that he proposes to come to the House at the conclusion of business to explain what has happened and what he proposes to do about it? That is a serious outbreak of violence in a sensitive institution and the House deserves to hear what Ministers are doing about it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I can understand the hon. Gentleman's concern about that serious matter, but at the moment I have no information that a Minister plans to make a statement. No doubt Government Front Benchers have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said and will take whatever action they think appropriate.

Douglas Hogg: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can you advise the House whether in special circumstances, such as those outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), it is possible to table an urgent question? I know that it usually has to be done early in the morning, but this is an exceptional situation.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct. Urgent questions have to be tabled in the morning and the procedure does not apply at this time.

Edward Garnier: I shall begin by referring to some remarks made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). Like me, he was present in the Standing Committee meeting on 14 November 2005 when we discussed the same issue with the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who was then an Under-Secretary at the Home Office. He and I had the better of the arguments then and I suspect that the House has had the better of the arguments today on the Government's case for the Billor their defence against the arguments we have heard.
	Nothing has changed since then, especially not with regard to the Government's ability to understand the opposition to their arguments. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome's point about the threat of the Parliament Acts is a good one, but it is even better when one considers the Acts that have been pushed through the Houseby both Conservative and Labour Governmentsby that means. I suspect that in the cool light of dayand of historyGovernments repent the use of the Parliament Acts to push through legislation.
	I have a triple advantageor it may be a triple disadvantagein that I have been an advocate in front of juries, especially in civil trials, for the past 25 or 30 years. I have come to respect the way in which juries, which nowadays are made up of a diverse cross-section of people, deal with the issues in front of them. Some of the jury trials in which I have acted as an advocate have involved simple issues and some have involved complicated issues. However, I have always been impressed by the collective wisdom and common sense of the juries before which I have appeared, both when they have found in favour of my clients and when they have found against them. Sometimes the juries' conclusions, in terms of verdicts and damages, have been deeply unsatisfactory and sometimes they have been deeply satisfactory, but in all cases I have been prepared to support the application of the jury to that aspect of the civil jurisdiction.
	I have also seen the jury system at work within the criminal jurisdiction as a Crown court recorder. In that capacity, I have directed juries, received questions from them, seen advocates address juries and seen defendants' attitudesincluding their body language and the way in which they give evidenceto juries. Even though I may disagree with the verdicts reached by juriesI do not do so oftenI am entirely satisfied that the jury is the right forum to decide the facts and issues of guilt or innocence.
	On the point about complexity, I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) will agree that some short trials deal with immensely complicated questions. Alternatively, some very long trials deal with immensely simple factual matrices.
	For example, a trial involving self-defence might last only one or two days but the legal issue is very complicated, requiring careful explanation and consideration by the jury. However, I have yet to read a Court of Appeal case in which it was suggested that the jury could not handle the complicated matters involved. Juries provide a bulwark against the state and the democratic contact between the people and the criminal justice system. We throw them away at our peril, and at the public's peril.
	Finally, I have also had contact with the jury system in a third wayas a member of a jury panel. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes), I was summoned to the central criminal court in February or March this year, and had the thrill, which still awaits him, of attending the Old Bailey for five days. I never got on to a case: I was called for selection as a jury member in five or six trials, but every time my name was pulled out in the ballot I was expelled from the room. It was held that I could not possibly be a fair jury member because I knew either the judge or members of the defence or prosecution teams.
	I had hopes of serving on the jury in a trial in which the hon. and learned Member for Medway was one of the defence counsel. However, he could hardly contain his mirth when he saw that I was the shy and diffident member of the public who had been brought forward to assist him and the other advocates to do justice, and I was sent back upstairs. I got to know the Old Bailey's lift system extremely well but I was never able to try a case, much as I would have liked to.
	I fully accept the analysis of jury membership that the hon. and learned Member for Medway gave earlier, but the people in the Old Bailey's jury waiting room did not consist only of the unemployed, the disabled, or women. The lesson that I learned was that the people waiting to serve came from all areas of the economic, social and ethnic spectrum available for London juries. When people asked not to sit on particular juries, the reasons and excuses that they gave to the judge ranged from difficulties over child care to booked holidays. In my case, problems arose because I knew the judge or members of the defence or prosecution teams.
	Everyone had been summoned to be available for jury service for only two weeks, but pretty well every case was expected to last far longer than that. The whole point of the central criminal court is that it tries big and serious criminal cases that very often last for months. It is certainly not uncommon for them to last for more than two weeks, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Medway will confirm that some cases tried there have lasted almost a year. We all know from our constituency experience, or even from simply reading the news, that lengthy drug-dealing casesmy hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) mentioned one in which he was involved at Isleworth Crown courtand lengthy cases on terrorism, kidnapping, people trafficking and issues such as the Morecambe bay cockle pickers, require juries to listen to evidence and digest complicated legal issues for some little while.
	There is absolutely nothing in the Government's argument, which was put forward with some confusion by the Solicitor-General, that lengthy cases of fraud are unsuitable to be tried by a jury. If there is anything in that argument, it should apply across the board. The argument should apply to cases of murder, kidnapping or drug dealing; it cannot be sold on the basis that it applies only to complex fraud cases. Cases are lengthy for good or bad reasons. If the reason is bad, it is a matter of management and discipline, which involves the judge. Before that, it is a matter for the prosecuting team to distil the important issues for getting its case across to the jury and for the defendants to show discipline and co-operation, by not wasting time making irrelevant and footling points.
	Co-operation in the criminal process is essential. It is clear to anyone who has bothered to look at the evidence behind the complaints about the length of trials and the failure in some cases to reach a conclusion that the jury has never been the reason for the collapse, as the inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr. Stephen Wooler, pointed out in his report, and the Attorney-General agreedI thinkin his statement to the other place earlier this year. The reason for the collapse has been failure to manage, prepare and co-operate. It is no good the SFO or the CPS handing over the keys to a warehouse of documents and telling the defence team to sort them out; it is the duty of the prosecution to find the documents that are relevant to its case and to explain and disclose them to the defence. The more judges are given, and exercise, powers to discipline loose prosecution and defendants who through their legal teams fail to co-operate, the more cases will run efficiently.

Stephen Hesford: If I have understood the hon. and learned Gentleman correctly, he is saying that the issue is one of case management, so the only difference between what he is saying and what I am saying is that we approach the solution to case management differently.

Edward Garnier: I am hesitant to reach any accommodation with the hon. Gentleman, because I found what he said almost impenetrable. I am not at all sure that the House will want to reflect too long on the remarks he made in his speech. I had intended to do him the service of not referring to it, but as he has provoked me I shall do so.
	The hon. Gentleman advanced an argument based on nothing more than assertion and insult. He insulted his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway, who made a cogent case against the Government, yet the hon. Gentleman, having scribbled a few notes on the back of the Bill, allowed us to be impressed by the fact that as he made a less than important point he was comforted by a little nod from the Solicitor-General. But what was particularly worrying, beyond the way in which he presented his argument, was that he thought that the Bill would act as a deterrent against serious fraud and as a measure to produce more guilty pleas. If that is the way in which the Government and their acolytes wish to advance arguments against the jury, we have a lot more to worry about than I originally thought. But I am sure that the House is grateful for what the hon. Gentleman had to say.

Stephen Hesford: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Edward Garnier: No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman has given us the benefit of his views and we are able to judge them.
	I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Medway in this. He said that the Bill constituted a serious attack on our civil liberties and that it was unnecessary, unworkable, expensive and unwise. In all of that he was entirely right. He said that, not just from the position of someone who wishes to annoy the Government, but from the position of someone who has even more experience in the criminal courts than my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), and he was characteristically but none the less modest in drawing to our attention the huge experience that he has in these matters. It is absolutely no good for the Government or their friends to attack him for making arguments based on evidence and long experienceand common sense.
	The protocol that Lord Woolf, then Lord Chief Justice, introduced in March 2005 is barely a year old, and yet the Government are saying that it is of no account. The Fraud Act 2006, which completed its passage through Parliament just before we prorogued, has yet to be made use of and yet no doubt was introduced to this Parliament for a purpose. It has simplified the law of fraud and the way in which our courts will be able to look at alleged fraud. And yet the Government are so hyperactive and so addicted to headline legislation that they do not even wait to draw the conclusions of their own legislation before rushing on to pass another piece of legislationand in the face of arguments that we have heard any number of times and seen defeated both here and in the other place, albeit I accept that the Government are capable of crashing legislation through as a result of their whipping capacity.
	Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken against the Bill. Those on the Labour Benches, apart from the hon. and learned Member for Medway, expressed their dissatisfaction with the Bill by means of interventions. Others, on the Opposition side of the House, have had the opportunity to speak, some at length and some at less length, about the issues that concern them.
	I can extract some broad themes from the speeches. The first is that the jury system is under attack; and that whether it is under attack in this narrow sense or more broadly, it is none the less the necessary upholder of our civil liberties and the necessary barrier between the state and the citizen, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and others said. It was also said that the jury system is the necessary introducer of the citizen into the criminal justice system and prevents it from being but an esoteric lawyers' fest; I think it is important that we remember that and that we maintain that important break.
	My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham asked three important questions. First, he asked whether it was appropriate for juries to try lengthy and complex serious fraud cases. Not surprisingly he answered that it was, and he used the analogy of drug dealing cases, murder cases and terrorist cases. He went on to ask whether there is a principle that can be established to demonstrate that the Government's case is right. All the Government can do to come anywhere near that is to produce an argument based on Executive convenience. Indeed, Executive conveniencethe convenience of this Governmenthas been promoted to the level of a principle in itself.
	I was disappointed at the manner in which the Solicitor-General advanced his case. Some years ago, I listened with great interest to the late Lord Williams, speaking in the other place on the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) Billthe first of two such Bills, I believe. It was a fine speech in support of an argument that he knew he was going to lose. At his fingertips were all the factual and legal arguments required to convince a sceptical House of Lords. He failed, but he did so with good grace and with a flourish. Tonight we have heard arguments that were confusing, confused, ahistorical and based not on fact, but on the Government's prejudice against the jury system as a whole. Although they try to argue that this is just a narrow piece of legislation, it is but the sharp end of a very big wedge.
	The Government have used arguments based on efficiency, based on the need to deal with delay, based on the need to deal with expense and based on the need to make cases explicable to a jury. The Solicitor-General said that his arguments were not about what I characterise, perhaps unfairly to him, as the stupid jury argument. He said that that was not the case, but he then went on to explain how these serious and lengthy fraud cases were incapable of being understood by a jury and how they needed to be removed from juries so that lawyers and a judge could deal with them and produce the convictions that the Government think appropriate. That is in line, of course, with the Prime Minister's argument that the current criminal justice system is outmoded and requires, as the Government constantly tell us, modernisation.
	We have it in our power to defeat the Government tonightif not by votes, at least by argument. My hon. Friends have demonstrated that, as have the two Liberal Democrat spokesmen today. I suggest that we not only convert our arguments into votes, but convert our votes into a majority against the Bill. Believe you me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, even if we do not win here tonight, we will not have lost the argument and there is another place that forms an equal part of our parliamentary system, which will check, advise and warn the Government that they are making a mistakenot just some ordinary and easily remediable mistake, but a fundamental and very dangerous one.

Joan Ryan: I am grateful to all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General opened the debate, saying that fraud does enormous damage to our national economy and that the Government are determined to modernise our criminal justice system to tackle it. That is indeed our starting point and the outcome of the Bill, if enacted, will be precisely that.
	Before going any further, I would like to say on the record that we are talking about a change that will affect 0.02 per cent. of fraud trials, leaving 99.9 per cent. of the 28,000 jury trials held each year unchanged. I say that for the sake of context and perspective.
	The Government have no doubt at all that trial by jury is not the best way of dealing with the most serious and complex fraud cases. They are supported in that view by a long line of distinguished authorities, going back to Lord Roskill's committee in 1986, the establishment of the Serious Fraud Office and Lord Justice Auld's independent reviewall were attempts to address the difficulties clearly evident over the past few decades, particularly the difficulty of conducting a trial by jury in a small number of fraud and other financial cases.
	It is vital that we have a system that is able to deal effectively with all kinds of crime. Trial without jury in serious and complex fraud cases will redress the existing imbalance between everyday frauds, which are readily brought to justice, and a few spectacular white-collar cases, in which the full criminality alleged against the defendant cannot always be exposed. Justice is not done when jurors have to reach verdicts on truncated versions of the facts in severed cases, when the totality of offending is not exposed. Certainly, that is not justice for the victims. Trial without jury will also spare those citizens who are selected to serve in such cases the intolerable burden of hearing a case that lasts for many months, or even a year or more. It will avoid trials collapsing as jurors become ill, refuse to continue, despair, or drop out for numerous other genuine reasons.
	The case for change has commanded general support. In 2003, the former Master of the Rolls, Lord Donaldson of Lymington, who I understand always commanded the strong support of Conservative Ministers, supported the Government's proposals. The Government are very supportive of trial by jury, but would agree strongly with Baroness Scotland, who said, when speaking on these matters in another place:
	The threshold for non-jury trial is a high one, and deliberately so. Where it is necessary in the interests of justice looked at in the round for a case to be conducted without a jury we would ask, what possible case can there be for doing anything else?[ Official Report, House of Lords, 19 November 2003; Vol. 654, c. 1943.]
	Lord Justice Auld said that he was
	firmly of the view that we should wait no longer before introducing a more just and efficient form of trial in serious and complex fraud cases.
	If Opposition Members will not listen to any of the lords justices and other people I have mentioned, they will surely take note of a certain Polly Toynbee, who wrote in  The Guardian last November:
	There are only a handful of major cases a yearbut they are extremely serious. Big-time fraudsters are getting off very lightly compared with the pathetic trail of inept small frauds by clumsy, often desperate amateurs who are easily caught and sentenced. So if you want to cheat, do it big enough and you will probably escape with your millions.
	She went on to say:
	The Government proposes that any non-jury case would need agreement from the Lord Chief Justice...Consider that no jury hears the 90 per cent. of cases dealt with by magistrates, where the humbler folk can get a one-year sentence. But the lure of grandstanding over the sanctity of jury trials may be irresistible for the opposition.

Douglas Hogg: The hon. Lady has been relying on Lord Roskill and Lord Justice Auld, but perhaps she should remind the House that the Bill goes far beyond what they recommended. Both of them recommended that there should be a panel to sit with the single judge, unless the defendant chose otherwise.

Joan Ryan: My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General set out in his speech what they recommended. They both recommended that we should dispense with jury trial in these cases.

Edward Garnier: I would not like the Minister unwittingly to mislead herself, let alone anybody else. The jurisdiction of the magistrates courts to pass sentences of one year is not yet in force. It is one of the many aspects of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that the Government have yet to implement.

Joan Ryan: The hon. and learned Gentleman is correct.
	I turn to several of the comments made by hon. Members during the debate. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) made a number of serious and important points and I have no doubt that they will be returned to in Committee. However, his assertion that the Government do not like juries is clearly not the case. It has been pointed out that it is likely that we will be increasing the number of jury trials that take place. Additionally, several measures introduced under Conservative Governments decreased the number of jury trials. However, this is not just a matter of liking juries; we also have to love justice.
	My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) talked about trial without a jury as though that was totally unheard of, ignoring the notion of civil courts. He also referred to civil liberties and the European Court of Human Rights and jury trials. I remind him that other European countries do not rely on jury trials. Holland relies on professional judges and Italy puts its trust in a tribunal of three judges. Germany, Austria, France, Finland and Sweden prefer to try criminal cases with mixed tribunals that comprise a professional judge and several laymen. Even in England and Wales, only about 1 per cent. of criminal cases culminate in trial by jury.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will my hon. Friend set out the elementary checks and balances that exist in inquisitorial systems in European jurisdictions that do not exist in our system? If she could give us just two or three examples, it would help.

Joan Ryan: My point was about the European Court of Human Rights. My hon. and learned Friend will have to go away and do his own research on the point that he raises.
	I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) outline all the measures that the Government have implemented to improve judicial procedures in criminal trials. However, although those improvements were clearly necessary and important, they have not dealt with the difficulties that the Bill will addressI shall come to them in a moment. He also talked about the quality of verdicts. I think that it was pointed out earlier that section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 offers an all-important advantage to defendants in the form of a reasoned verdict. Defendants who are convicted by a jury are not entitled to know the reasons for the verdict, so that is an important point.

Simon Hughes: Apart from the Jubilee line case, which collapsed for reasons that were nothing to do with the jury, what other cases would the hon. Lady cite as examples to support the Polly Toynbee argument that all these people are getting away with things? Alternatively, is the hon. Lady saying that the verdicts of the juries have been wrong?

Joan Ryan: My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General listed the casesI am sure that the hon. Gentleman was listening. I will refer back to some of those cases in a moment.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) was quite right to talk about the will of the House. When we had this debate before, the House supported these measures. My hon. Friend brought a breath of fresh air and reality to the debate, which had been lost during the previous three speeches. He talked about case management and I saw no reason why he should not have done so. He is right that the Bill does not introduce an automatic procedure; a decision will have to be made by the Lord Chief Justice. He made a good point about the possible deterrent effect of such a way of proceeding and gave relevant examples of the type of fraud cases in which these measures will assist greatly.
	Several hon. Members made the point that the Government were about to force through their will on a three-line Whip. They seem to forget that they will try to force the measure to fail, as their Whip confirmed to me, despite its having the support of this, the elected House. I do not know whether Opposition Members have been given a free vote tonight, but if they have

Andrew Turner: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you confirm that the vote takes place after the debate, not before?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that that is self-evident.

Joan Ryan: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and I can have a discussion after the vote, when we have had the outcome. I do not think that I will have to withdraw anything that I have said.
	The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) pointed out in his contribution that he was not a lawyer, and I am sure that I do not need to point outI think that all Members knowthat I am not a lawyer either. Like him, however, I was interested to hear the many contributions from Members who have legal experience; indeed, many of them are hon. and learned Friends and Members. The hon. Gentleman said that today he had been proud to listen to the lawyers. I just want to say that it is not lawyers to whom I thought I was listeningthey may well bring experience to the debate, but we speak in this House as Members of Parliament on behalf of our constituents whom we represent, and that needs to be borne in mind.
	The law does not exist for lawyers or to occupy lawyers; it exists to deliver justice, and that is our aim here today. A number of Members commented on how many speeches had been made today on each side of the debate, and we are getting quite exercised about the mathematics of the issue. Of course, what really matters is the strength of argumentquality as opposed to quantity. I think that quality rested very firmly on this side of the House.
	We wish the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes), my neighbour, well in his role as a juror. Knowing him, I have no doubt that he will undertake that role with commitment and integrity. However, he talked about a price worth paying in these long trials that are so burdensome for juries. Knowing that he is a dedicated family man who puts time into doing his job locally, I would be very surprised if he was willing to serve a year or more on such a trial.
	A number of Members asked why fraud cases are so different from lengthy drugs and terrorism cases. That seemed to be the crux of the argument for many Members. The first thing that makes them different is the combination of great length and a failure to bring defendants to justice on the full range of allegations. There are also the recommendations of judges who have produced serious reports, such as Roskill and Auld, to whom I have referred. They have identified serious and complex fraud cases as a particular problem.  [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Conversations appear to be breaking out throughout the House. These are extremely serious matters, and the House should listen to the Minister who is addressing them.

Joan Ryan: A series of high-profile casesMaxwell, Blue Arrow, da Costa, the Talbot village trust case in 2004, Cushnie and others in 2004, and the Jubilee line case and the Global Wildlife Trust case in 2005have raised concerns. There is a long track record of fraud case problems. That is why we have decided to deal with fraud in particular, and it is why we have no plans to extend this provision to a wider range of cases. The proposal has had a long gestation, and no other area of law can claim that. The Government are disappointed that no agreement with the main Opposition parties has been forthcoming, in spite of our best efforts. We take the view that the time has come to give effect to the provision that Parliament passed in 2003. We remain certain of the importance of the measure, and we are confident that our arguments will be convincing.
	I commend the Bill to the House and ask hon. Friends and hon. Members to support its Second Reading.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:
	 The House divided: Ayes 289, Noes 219.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read a Second time.

FRAUD (TRIALS WITHOUT A JURY) BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill:
	 Committal 
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
	 Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
	2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 14th December 2006.
	3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	 Consideration and Third Reading 
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	 Other proceedings 
	7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed. [Kevin Brennan.]
	 Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, and Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme

That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 10755/06, draft Council Regulation establishing a European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and draft Council Decision empowering the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights to pursue its activities in areas referred to in Title VI of the Treaty of the European Union, and No. 13104/06, draft Council Decision establishing for the period 20072013 the specific programme 'Fundamental Rights and Citizenship' as part of the general programme 'Fundamental Rights and Justice'; notes that the proposals aim at promoting knowledge of and respect for fundamental rights in the European Union; and endorses the Government's policy of support for the measures, taking account of its reservations on the references to the Charter in the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme and the extension of the Fundamental Rights Agency's remit to the third pillar. [Kevin Brennan.]
	 The House divided: Ayes 346, Noes 158.

Question accordingly agreed to.

PETITIONS

Post Offices

Bob Spink: I rise to present a petition from about 3,500 constituents who believe, as I do, that the Government should change their policy and support our important and worthy post offices. Post office closures hurt the whole community, but disproportionately hurt vulnerable peoplethe disabled, elderly people and people with families. I congratulate and thank the good and caring constituents who took the trouble to sign the petition, which states that people are
	deeply concerned about the demise of post offices
	and believe that the main problem is the withdrawal of Government business from post offices, which they see as
	an example of uncaring Government policy.
	The petition
	further hopes that individuals can preserve the right to receive their pension, benefits or family allowance paid weekly at their local Post Office through the Post Office Card Account.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Department for Work and Pensions to reconsider its decision not to renew the contract for post office Card accounts and to change its policy on the withdrawal of public business from post offices.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Widows' Benefits

Jim Cunningham: More than 7,000 people in Coventry and surrounding areas signed this petition. In their different ways, widows make a major contribution to their husbands' pension schemes.
	The Petition of Coventry British Pensioners and Trade Union Association,
	Declares that under a reform of widows' benefits, introduced in April 2001, a woman who is widowed under the age of 60 is now classed as a single woman and as such receives no pension, only bereavement benefit for one year. After this period she becomes a jobseeker receiving jobseekers allowance of 55-65 per week. Any private pension her husband may have paid into is deducted from this amount. This new benefit system means that these non widows are living in poverty. These are the women that have brought up today's working generation. This system was introduced by a government...
	The Petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge the Government to rectify this injustice.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Hospital Services

Andrew George: I wish to present a petition on behalf of more than 38,600 supporters in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in my constituency. I am pleased that my hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson) and for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) are present to witness its delivery.
	There are two small and excellent acute hospitals in my constituency, two of the three in the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust. Like many local people, I feel that we have been in perpetual campaign mode over the past decade or more in trying to protect those hospitals. It is seriously unwise and a dangerous folly to put all the emergency eggs in one basket at Treliske, excellent as that hospital is and dedicated as the staff may be.
	The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust ended the year with a deficit of 15.6 million. That raises the fear that acute services at St Michael's hospital and emergency services at West Cornwall hospital will be threatened. On 27 August, 27,000 people marched through my home town of Hayle in support of the two hospitals. Feelings are running high, and Ministers simply cannot pass the buck to those whom they have appointed to run the services.
	The petition states:
	The People of West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly declare our support for the cross-party (and non-party political) campaign to oppose any plans to reduce or close hospital services at St Michael's or Penzance; express our dismay that NHS money is being used to build up and support private hospitals while the Trust is contemplating the closure of the excellent St Michael's Hospital; object to the waste of money on administrative gimmicks rather than frontline public services; demand an Independent Review of hospital services and for fair funding; support an increase in emergency as well as acute and diagnostic services in the West of Cornwall.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons expresses its support of this campaign to save two of west Cornwall's most crucial public services.
	 To lie upon the Table.

PATHWAYS TO WORK (WIRRAL)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Steve McCabe.]

Angela Eagle: As a great supporter of the concept of pathways to work, I rise to share with the House the early experiences of the programme in Wirral and to note the results so far. I also hope to draw some useful conclusions about future effectiveness.
	When I was a Minister at what is now the Department for Work and Pensions, I was closely involved in the transformation of the then Benefits Agency into what is now known as Jobcentre Plus. The aim was to retool the Government's administrative apparatus and ensure that we could deliver a more active labour market, and hence try to offer more positive choices for those of working age who had found themselves having to claim benefits. Since that time, the new deal has blossomed and laid the groundwork for the national presence of the personal adviser-led pathways to work programme, which has recently arrived in Wirral.
	Although the capacity of the Government to deliver an effective, active labour market service to claimants has risen substantially since 1997, so have the needs of those who are still left without work after well over a decade of economic growth and the creation of 2.5 million extra jobs. In the Wirral area, the proportion of people of working age claiming incapacity benefit or income support and therefore eligible to enter the pathways to work programme is 11 per cent. That is by no means one of the highest figures in the country, but it is not one of the lowest either.
	That means that substantial numbers of our fellow citizens are finding access to work difficult because of illness or injury. In some of the electoral wards that I represent, levels of incapacity benefit and income support claims are even higher than that. It is difficult to see how such areas can share fully in the rising prosperity of the country and benefit from our growing economy when they have so many people workless and stuck on benefits. It is our duty to reach out to try to help them.
	Life on incapacity benefit is not easy, as the levels of payment are hardly generous. That is especially true if the individual is out of work for any length of time. Yet Government figures show that the average length of time that incapacity benefit recipients spend out of work is increasing. When the benefit was first created in 1985, an individual could expect to spend an average of three years out of work; that has now gone up to nine years. That means that those who fall out of the labour market and on to incapacity benefit are finding it increasingly hard to get back into work. That is the case despite a buoyant labour market. We must work out why that is, and seek to address it effectively, if we are to spread opportunity throughout the country and ensure that no one is left behind.
	The pathways to work national programme was begun in 2002 in order to achieve progress in that important area. Initial research demonstrated that of the 2.7 million people receiving incapacity benefit, 1 million wished to find work. A good proportion volunteered to go on to pathways programmes because they rightly saw them as helpful and beneficial. Perhaps surprisingly, experience in the initial pilots demonstrated that the main barriers to incapacity benefit recipients finding work were to do not with the health condition that had probably led them to claim benefit in the first place, but with their loss of confidence after spending time out of work or having had some trauma in their lives, their lack of skills, and worries about being able to leave benefits safely. Therefore, suggesting effective ways to tackle these problems was an obvious design priority for the programme.
	 It being Seven o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
	 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn .[Steve McCabe.]

Angela Eagle: Initial results nationally also showed that three chronic conditions accounted for three quarters of all the health complaints of those who ended up claiming incapacity benefit. Some 35 per cent. had mental health issues such as stress and depression, 22 per cent. had musculoskeletal conditions such as neck or back problems, and 11 per cent. had cardiovascular conditions such as high blood pressure, respiratory illness or angina.
	Pathways to work came to Wirral as part of phase two of the national implementation strategy on 24 April. New incapacity benefit claimants now get immediate access to help by being given a mandatory work-focused interview within two months of their initial claim. Some cases involving serious medical conditions are waived at this stage; other claimants, however, are interviewed every month and assisted in a plan to get back to work quickly, before a lack of confidence has time to become established. Initial results in my locality show that this is working well.
	The very good news is that in the first six months, 352 people in the district, 120 of whom are from the Wirral, have been enabled to move off incapacity benefit and into work. That shows that the programme is effective even for those who have been seen as the hardest to help. I am enthusiastic about this and I want it to continue, but I want more people to be helped more quickly. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the steps that could be taken to spread this opportunity further and faster in the Wirral and elsewhere.
	I know that effort is also being made to contact and motivate those who have been on benefit for some time. As a first phase, Jobcentre Plus contacted 800 existing claimants in the Wirral, asking about their condition and whether they would like access to the assistance that pathways can offer. The response rate was unusually high, and it became clear from the responses how great a problem stress and depression has developed into. Instead of such lower-level mental illness accounting for a 35 per cent. share of the big three chronic conditions causing incapacity benefit claims, as it does nationally, the figure locally is an astonishing 86 per cent. Only 9 per cent. of claims are caused by physical conditions. Stress and depression thus appears to be by far the main barrier to work among benefit claimants of working age. That might not be such a surprising conclusion, on reflection, because we know, for example, that being jobless can ultimately cause depression. This can be made worse by the lack of confidence that often results from struggling on benefits and losing the sense of self-worth that comes from employment.
	In my advice surgeries, I all too often come across people whose mental well-being has been destroyed by bullying at work, which not only causes them to leave their existing employment but often destroys their future employment prospects. Can my hon. Friend the Minister say whether the Government have any plans to address this hidden but costly problem and to minimise the undoubted costs to our economy?
	I have spent some time talking to the dedicated staff who are delivering the in-work support and the condition management programme that pathways can offer to incapacity benefit recipients. They, too, are struck by the huge effect that stress and depression appears to be having on the life chances of many people. In the first six months of the programme, 138 people across the district were referred to the condition management programme, which is provided in the Wirral by the local primary care trust. I met some of the very committed nurses and psychologists who support this invaluable and hitherto unavailable service. They use cognitive behaviour therapy to assist people in managing poor health and stress, and they also assist them in developing more positive feelings of well-being. Some of that involves advice on diet and exercise and pain management, and on such disparate things as goal-setting in life, and even relaxation techniques.
	The programme begins with an understanding that years out of work can destroy confidence and impairs the ability to face challenges without destructive anxiety. It goes on to teach claimants how to overcome such barriers. It does not provide medical treatment and is therefore complementary to existing NHS services. Participation is entirely voluntary. Many benefit recipients choose to go on the programme, and the early evidence is that it is very valuable. I suspect that it is filling a gap left by the lack of work-based occupational health services and preventive counselling for depression and stress-related conditions. It can prevent people from deteriorating into more serious mental suffering.
	If our experience in the Wirral is anything to go by, the cost of those gaps in health provision, both socially and economically, seem to be far higher than we might previously have imagined. I have read some of the local case studies and they show convincingly just how much stress and anxiety has gone unnoticed and untreated in our society. Over and over again, nurses delivering the condition-management programme reported to me that their questioning of benefit recipients to establish how they had fallen out of the labour market in the first place led them to comment that it was the first time that anyone in the system had bothered to ask them how they were, or offered them any useful advice or support. The early experience of the programme was that such people could get back on their own two feet again with just a little help at the right time.
	In some cases, the response has been positive and instantaneous, with a transformation of the condition and a quick and successful return to work. In achieving that very encouraging result, the return to work credit has been an invaluable tool. It is payable to those who have taken a job earning less than 15,000 a year, and is worth 40 a week for 52 weeks. In other cases, the path back to employment is harder and more difficult to embark on, but there have been some notable success stories, which inspire confidence that the programme will go from strength to strength.
	I wish especially to commend the work of the local administrators programme, in both Jobcentre Plus and the NHS. They are working well together in achieving the initial success that I have highlighted. Some 36 personal advisers in the district have received intensive training, 11 of whom operate from the Wirral. The local primary care trust has supplied five case managers to deliver the condition management programme, which is doing so much to offer a helping hand back to meaningful work.
	A further strength of our local programme is the employer engagement activities that have been undertaken. In order to create the potential to place claimants in jobs, it is vital that local employers have their often bad perceptions of incapacity benefit claimants challenged. That has been achieved locally by meeting some of those who have successfully made the transition back into work, and arranging testimony from employers who have hired them. It is a tribute to the positive relationships that have been established with the Merseyside Employer Coalition, and 176 individual employers, that so far 51 people have begun work with those employers.
	Pathways to work in the Wirral has made an encouraging start, but I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to learn the lessons that it is teaching us, especially about the prevalence of stress and depression and the effectiveness of some simple methods to help people deal with them. Above all, will my hon. Friend think about increasing the targets for re-engagement so that more can receive the assistance being offered by the programme? Can he also think about what further co-operation there could be between his Department and the Department of Health to tackle the gaps in provision to help with the effects of stress and depression that have been highlighted by our experience in the Wirral?

Jim Murphy: I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle). I am also delighted that others have taken the opportunity to join us in the Chamber this evening, including my hon. Friends the Members for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce), for Birmingham, Hall Green (Steve McCabe), for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) and the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle). It is a testimony to their interest in the issue that they are in their places.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey has, as she has said, had much experience in this area, as the content of her comments has proved. She was instrumental in laying the foundations of the Jobcentre Plus interview approach, which has allowed pathways to work to be introduced in the 40 per cent. of the country in which it operates at present.
	It is also an opportune time to have this debate, as tomorrow we will finish the Committee stage of the Welfare Reform Bill, which puts in place a new legislative framework to support people on incapacity benefit. In the past, many of those people have been written off by state or have simply given up on themselves, although which came first is often a moot point. However, a combination of factors has meant that far too many people remain on the benefit for dramatically prolonged periods, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey noted. Although 80 or 90 per cent. of claimants initially want and expect to work, she is right to say that the support has not been in place for them to do so. The Welfare Reform Bill will change the entire dynamic of welfare support for people on incapacity benefit.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey spoke knowledgably about the Merseyside Employer Coalition. While it is essential that we put in place the legislative framework necessary both for the roll-out of pathways and to underpin people's rights and responsibilities, we must also ensure that employers are engaged. To put it in a crudely economic sense, the Welfare Reform Bill and the initiative, effort and investment involved in pathways amount to a supply-side intervention in the labour market. To make that work, we must make sure that there is employer demand for people whose rebuilt confidence and regained skills bring them closer to the labour market. If they are ready to work, employers will be able and willing to take them on.
	Earlier today, I had the opportunity to visit Sainsbury's London headquarters to celebrate the first anniversary of a fantastic initiative called Workright, which promotes the right to work of people with learning disabilities. I listened to inspirational personal testimonies from the relatively small number of people involved. They said that the initiative had given them greater confidence and self-esteem, and described how the opportunity to work had transformed their lives and their perception of themselves. That is a great testimony to the companies involved and to Mencap, which has played a key role in supporting folk with a learning disability to enter, and remain in, the labour market.
	Supporting people to enter the labour market is only part of the challenge, as we know, but we must keep them there and make sure that they do not continue to bounce backward and forward between work and the benefits system. That is why the engagement of employers is crucial, and why we have to do more in that regard.
	There are some really enlightened and progressive employers in this country. I shall not name any, as to do so would be unfair to any that I do not mention, but they include some of our major companies, and we also have some very enlightened small and medium-sized firms. We must make sure that their good practice is spread more widely.
	Companies seem willing to talk in very positive terms about employing people who have claimed incapacity benefit as a result of a learning disability or a mental or other illness. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey is right to say that we must learn the lessons from the pathways roll-out, both in the north-west of England and across the UK as a whole. For example, the pilot scheme in Somerset makes support available for all incapacity benefit claimants, not just new ones. We will analyse the findings that emerge from that scheme and from some of the other innovations that we are trying within the pathways framework to determine the best environment for national roll-out in the private and voluntary sectors. For that reason, we will look very closely at the experience in the Wirral and elsewhere.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey also spoke about engaging with the NHS and health providers generally. Of course, a key part of the Welfare Reform Billthe central thrust of part 1is the establishment of the employment support allowance, underpinned by the national roll-out of pathways. That will progressively and sensitively encourage people to try to come off incapacity benefit.
	An additional part of our agenda for having a million fewer people on incapacity benefit over a decade is to prevent them from having to be on it in the first place. That will not be by rigidly and punitively tightening the gateway to prevent people from claiming incapacity benefit or employment support allowance, but by making much earlier interventionsthrough employers, the Department of Health, health professionals and otherson the journey out of work and economic activity to incapacity benefit. In many instances, there are markers or flags, such as fluctuating mental health conditions, during people's experience of that journey and we must make much more coherent interventions when signs of the early evolution of a condition become apparent.

Angela Eagle: I thank my hon. Friend for those comments, because he refers to a crucial part of what we need to learn. So many people in Wirral seem to have fallen into incapacity benefit because they were not helped when they were just about to fall out of work. An occupational helping hand is lacking at the appropriate time, as is cognitive behavioural therapy, which is easily given and not too expensive. Will my hon. Friend raise those points with his ministerial colleagues in the Department of Health? Can we provide more of a safety net than appears to have been the case in the past?

Jim Murphy: I shall be happy to raise the issue. We have been discussing it in some detail with colleagues at the Department of Health, but as my hon. Friend has referred to it in the House, I shall raise it again and respond to her, either formally at a meeting, if she wishes, or in writing, with an update on progress with our ministerial colleagues.
	I hope that my hon. Friend will allow me to make a slightly more political point. In the 1980s and, to some extent, in the early 1990s, many observers would have been forgiven for coming to the conclusion that Government policy was actively to encourage people to claim incapacity benefit rather than unemployment benefit. At a time of mass unemployment, when the Government's economic policies were failing, there was real pressure at local level for people to go from major redundancy straight on to incapacity benefit. There were two years in the 1980s when the incapacity benefit on-flows were above, or at, 1 million. There was nothing in the water, the air or the food chain during those two yearsnothing different in the environment; the operation of the welfare system encouraged people on to incapacity benefit, explicitly or implicitly as a matter of Government policy. I am glad to say that the Labour Government's approach is the polar opposite.
	As my hon. Friend kindly acknowledged, we have made significant progress. Nationally, over the past decade, the number of people in work went up by more than 2.5 million to a record 29 million. The employment rate is up. Employment has risen in every region and country in the UK and unemployment has fallen, according to both jobseeker's allowance and International Labour Organisation measurements. The claimant unemployment rate has fallen most in areas where unemployment was previously highest, from which, as Labour Members, we take great spirit. Long-termsix months plusyouth claimant unemployment has fallen by almost two thirds.
	My hon. Friend will be aware of the statistics relating to her area, but the House and the public record will be enlightened by my sharing them with a wider audience. Since 1997, employment in Wallasey is up by 4.4 percentage points, which is better than the national improvement, and claimant unemployment is down by 40 per cent. Long-term unemploymentone year plusis down by 80 per cent., which again is better than the national figure, and long-term youth unemployment is down by 60 per cent. Of 7,050 new deal starts, 4,840 individuals have been helped into work.
	My hon. Friend noted that pathways to work was introduced in April and alluded to its successful roll-out in her constituency thus far. I acknowledge that we do have further to go; we all know that. As she said, it is not good enough that if a person is on incapacity benefit for a year or more, the average becomes nine years. The crucial role of pathways is to provide that earlier dimension, so that people do not become conditioned into a life of benefit and economic inactivity. The scale of our challenge is illuminated by the fact that three quarters of our current IB customers have been on the benefit two years or more. We lay that alongside the pretty hellish statistic that, on averagethere are of course exceptionsif someone is on incapacity benefit for two years or more they are more likely to retire or die than ever work a day again in their lives. Three quarters of our current 2.6 million customers are already beyond that threshold, so that highlights the scale of the challenge that we have identified for ourselves as a Labour Government to support a net reduction of a million people on the current numbers of people on incapacity benefit.
	I shall now mention the additional efforts that we are making in respect of the pathways in the Welfare Reform Bill. Pathways will be delivered by Jobcentre Plus in 40 per cent. of the country by the end of this year, and we shall ensure that there is coverage throughout Great Britain in time to underpin the employment and support allowance envisaged in the Bill. That will be achieved in phases, the first to be complete by October 2007. Procurement for the first phase has already begun, and I know that my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that some of the experience from elsewhere has been taken into that roll-out. We are using the private and voluntary sectors, and we have taken a deliberate decision to use them, with their expertise, in the future roll-out.
	I was delighted recently to have the opportunity to visit the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw, where the voluntary sector was playing a crucial role. In Carfin, an organisation called First Step was playing a crucial role in supporting people. I met a lady there who had been a paramedic, who had had a brain injury as a consequence of an operation. She spoke with real passion and great emotion about her utter determination to get back to work. We all know that that support has not been in place in the past.
	Experiences such as that, and those that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey has alluded to, highlight the need for condition management support and for tailored niche support for each and every individual, whether they have a brain injury, a learning disability or a fluctuating mental health condition. About 40 per cent. of current customers coming on to incapacity benefit do so because of a fluctuating mental health condition. That is a real change over the past decade. There is also a change in the gender profile of our customers, with an increasing number of womenabout 42 per cent.coming on to incapacity benefit. We shall use that knowledge in alignment with our determination to eradicate relative child poverty in this country. One in six of our IB customers have a dependant child, so a missing part of the conversation thus far on incapacity benefit reform concerns the real impact that it will and can have in a progressive way on the eradication of child poverty.
	Recently, the different parties attitudes to alleviating child poverty have been in the news, but as yet there is no consensus on that. There appears to be a welcome but belated consensus on welfare reform, but on child poverty and our determination to eradicate child poverty within a generation, the Government stand alone in the House as being committed to the eradication of child poverty, with policies and a specific target to eradicate that child poverty. The Welfare Reform Bill pathways and support for incapacity benefit customers form a key part of those policies.
	In conclusion, the success of pathways as rolled out thus far will help transform lives, particularly those of people who have been locked out of the labour market for far too long. We can help them through pathways and the introduction of the cities strategy. I know that my hon. Friend is enthusiastic about that and we want to work together to ensure that in the north-west of England, as well as in the other 14 pathfinders in the cities strategy, we have local leadership, local coalitions and consortiums designing solutions to the needs of local citizens. I am glad that the consortium in Liverpool extends to my hon. Friend's constituency and I hope that she is able to play a part in it.
	Finally, the Welfare Reform Bill, to be debated in Committee tomorrow, underpinned by the pathways that my hon. Friend has mentioned this evening, is about transforming support to those on incapacity benefit. It is about changing welfare as we know it. Too many people have been given up on in the past, but pathways, the new legislative framework, the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, the Disability Rights Commission and all we seek to achieve will ensure that people are excluded from the labour market no longerwhether deliberately, explicitly or implicitlyas long as, and only as long as, they wish to work. That will happen as a consequence of the effort, investment and determination of pathways providers through Jobcentre Plus and the private and voluntary sector.
	I am delighted that my hon. Friend has taken the opportunity to conduct this evening's debate at such an important time and on an issue of such crucial importance to her constituents and those of all Members throughout the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes past Seven o'clock.